


Hennepin Falls

by darrenzieger



Category: Peanuts
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-02-01 04:14:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 29
Words: 42,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12697143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darrenzieger/pseuds/darrenzieger
Summary: Note - this is not a sequel to or extension of the comic strip. The underlying premise is that the characters were never denizens of a cartoon universe; they are the strip's real-world equivalents. They are late-teenaged versions of the ~7-year-olds Charlie, Lucy, Sally, Marcie and the others would have been if they were real children, not comic caricatures.Snoppy is just Charlie's old beagle. He does not have a complex inner life, does not have fantasies of fighting the Red Baron, does not have a little sparrow friend named Woodstock. And so on.------The setting is the town of Hennepin Falls -- a variation on the Minnesota county of Hennepin where Charles Shulz grew up and where many believe the strip is set.Hennepin Falls, however, is in New York state, since that is where I always imagined the strip taking place, given Charlie's love of the Mets, or at least farm-team player Joe Shlabotnik.It is 1978, and Hennepin Falls, 40 miles outside of the NYC metro, is about to have its 1950s small-town bubble burst by "White Flight.""Hennepin Falls" is about that loss of innocence -- and yes, the other kind, too.=================================================





	1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

Charlie and Lucy lay in the grass of the playground across from Louis Hennepin high school, holding hands and chatting aimlessly. 11th grade had seemed like an endless march toward a receding destination, but it was finally over.

For Charlie, school itself had been the usual procession of frustrations, failures, humiliations, and existential crises; but for once, it didn't matter. 

He had Lucy.

For Lucy, classwork had been practically an afterthought - a distraction from devouring piles of college psychology texts.

Much to her own surprise, her childhood hobby of offering bad psychiatric advice to her friends for 5 cents per session had reemerged in her adolescence as a genuine fascination with the profession. For over a year, guided first by Freud and Jung, then Watson, Ellis & Harper, Horney, and Piaget, she'd followed that fascination through the corridors of her own troubled, emotionally violent mind to a place of understanding.

And when, her satori if not her education complete, she'd next opened her eyes to the outside world, she was knocking on Charlie Brown's door to startle him with a soul-deep embrace.

They'd been inseparable since.

She had been silent for several minutes, reviewing the history of their relationship in her head, as she often did, when she realized Charlie had not spoken for some time either. She turned to see him gazing intently at her, smiling beatifically.  
  
"Whatcha thinkin' about," he asked. 

It was no idle question. He was fascinated by her and hung on her every word. 

Knowing this, Lucy chided herself for her vague, contentless answer. "Oh, everything. Nothing."

Charlie raised an eyebrow.

Back to earth, she thought. "So how were your grades?"

Charlie chuckled. "How do you think? Straight C's as always. I'm the patron saint of mediocrity."

Lucy half-smiled, trying to somehow communicate both sympathy and a refutation of his low self-esteem.

Charlie turned away from her to lie on his back, his hands folded across his chest as if he were lying in state. He stared at the late-afternoon clouds without seeing them. "Lucy, why do you like me?"

 _Uh-oh_ , she thought. _He's going into one of his moods. Maybe I can turn this around._

"What are ya, fishing for compliments?"

"No, seriously." His voice was emphatic, and a slight whine had crept into his speech. "I'm nothing. I'm not smart, I have no talents. The only thing remarkable about me is how incredibly average I am."

Lucy winced. It was happening less often lately, but she hated it when Charlie talked like this. She hated that he was in pain, but it was more than that.

She sat up, cross-legged, and reached down to stroke Charlie's cheek. "Come on - sit up."

Charlie mirrored her pose. As they did when speaking of tender matters, they leaned in until their foreheads touched. But Charlie looked down to avoid her gaze.

"Good. Now, look at me. Look at me." 

Charlie complied and was transfixed by the unknowable depths of her deep, brown eyes. His self-loathing struggled for a foothold.

"Charlie, you are a lot smarter than you give yourself credit for - believe me, I wouldn't spend hours at a time talking with you if you weren't. And you... I just... No matter how many times I tell you, you can't get this through your thick skull: you're a great guy.  
  
"You're the kindest, sweetest person I've ever known. So maybe you haven't found your big talent yet; if I cared about that kind of thing, I'd still be stuck on Schroeder."

Despite himself, Charlie chuckled at this. Schroeder was a nice enough guy, and probably the most talented musician this side of Julliard - to which august institution he had already secured a scholarship. But he could only express his emotions through his nimble fingers.

"And you _are_ unique, you know. You've done something I think no other human being could ever do." 

 _Oh God_ , she thought, _am I really ready to get into this?_

Charlie was lost. He pulled back from her a few inches and shook his head. "What are you talking about?"

She cradled his face in her hands and drew him back. His heart sank when he saw that her eyes were damp.

She whispered. "You forgave me."

"I don't understand. Forgave you for what?"

She'd suspected this; still, she marveled. _He really doesn't know._

Instantly, she regretted her confessional impulse. All she'd achieved was to bring her self-esteem down to his level.

"You don't remember how awful I was to you when we were little? I..." Her voice caught. "I teased you, tormented you, played tricks on you. You came to me for advice and I told you your life was hopeless. I fed on your insecurities - which you might have gotten over long since if I hadn't always kicked you when you were down. You should hate me." 

He kissed her forehead, her cheek, her tears. The intimacy of these acts surprised them both, but they would think about that later.

"I think you had a bad dream. None of that stuff actually happened."

Ths possibility that he was right was so tantalizing it angered her. She suppressed the feeling before she spoke again. "And you've forgiven me so completely you don't even know you've done it."

He backed up again and stared so intently at her that she was afraid for a moment. She'd never seen this expression on his face. Was it anger?

No, she realized. She _had_ seen the expression before - when he was doing his trigonometry homework. She met his gaze and gave him time to work it out.

Charlie let the years slip away. He saw those same features, differently proportioned, on the face of an 8-year-old girl with a loud mouth and a perpetually angry expression.

 _Lucy stands over him as he lies frustrated, humiliated, on the pitcher's mound after one of dozens of losses. She regards him with a contempt tempered only by fatalism. Of course we lost, she says silently. We're_ your _team._

_Lucy smiles sweetly at him, offering to hold a football for him to kick. She snatches it away at the last moment. There is falling and confusion, and he finds himself flat on his back, with nothing to kick but himself for being so gullible. She's done this to him countless times before and will do it countless times again._

_Lucy sitting behind her converted lemonade stand, her psychiatrist's office.  Seated on the other side, he is saying "I know I'm a pretty sorry excuse for, well, everything. But I'm only 7. I'll find something I'm good at eventually. Like when I grow up, right?" Lucy, her expression flat (or is there a sadistic gleam in her eye), thinks for a moment. "Nah," she says. "Five cents, please."_

_"Stupid!"_

_"Loser!"_

_"Blockhead!"_

Charlie tried to be angry at her, as one might try on a jacket that appears ill-fitting. Just to be sure.

No. Nothing. None of it mattered. 

Yes, it had all happened. But so what? Children can be nasty. Uncivilized. They're still getting used to the fact that other people exist separately from themselves, that their feelings are as valid as one's own. Lucy had taught him that - it was in one of the college textbooks on child development she'd reviewed with him in great detail.

 _You weren't like that,_ he reminded himself.  _You always deferred to other people's wants and desires. You were nice to a fault._

 _No, you weren't_ that _nice. You just had low self-esteem. You were afraid of asserting yourself, afraid of conflict._

This was a revelation.

_Well, how about that - some of that psychology stuff has rubbed off on you. You should tell Lucy about it. She'll be really proud of you._

Lucy.

How long had he been lost in the past? How long had he kept her in suspense, waiting for his verdict? 

Surely too long. She still regarded him with equanimity, but it was clearly becoming a strain.

He kissed her mouth - at first gently, then with growing intensity. They'd made out many times, but this was different. This wasn't passion (well, not primarily). This was absolution.

In his mind, he told her everything: that their childhoods didn't matter, that he loved her, that he forgave her a thousand times over. He waxed eloquent without withdrawing his lips from hers. Somehow, he felt, he was communicating all of his thoughts through that connection.

Lucy got the gist of it.

After a timeless interval, they separated, glowing.  _This is what it will feel like when we finally make love_ , they both thought.

"Walk you home?" Charlie asked. Their parents would be suspicious if they were late.

"Yes," Lucy said, her features set in an unusually mischevious expression, "all the way."

Charlie wondered if she was implying what he thought she was, but he wasn't going to ask. It would be unseemly. Presumptious, even.

They walked toward their homes hand in hand, silently, their minds reeling, each in its own wild orbit.


	2. Chapter 2

Charlie regarded himself in the bathroom mirror, freshly showered: non-descript features arranged unremarkably on a somewhat round face; height, just below average; build, average - just a hint of a belly.  _Certainly nothing remarkable below that,_ he thought. _Bleah_.

_Still, it could be worse. At least my acne has cleared up._

He thought of that beautiful moment with Lucy the previous day. She had all but begged for his acceptance. Didn't she know he practically worshipped her?

And she wanted him. In retrospect, she'd made that very clear. 

How could she look at...  _this...,_ he marveled, and feel desire?

He dressed in his usual outfit - button-down short-sleeve shirt of no particular color or pattern, dark slacks...

 _Wait a minute. It's summer vacation, you idiot_ , he chided himself, _you can go casual._

In truth, he could have dressed more casually for school, but somehow it didn't feel right.

_OK, New York Mets t-shirt and shorts. Much better._

_Still, pretty boring. I need to work on my sense of style. Maybe I'll feel better about myself if I look cool._

He pondered what passed for hip these days. Bell bottoms? _No, I don't think I can support bell bottoms. You have to be tall and lean. Also, they're kind of stupid._ Heavy metal band t-shirt?  _Nope. Not me. I hate the music, plus nothing about me says "hard rock." If someone saw me in an AC/DC shirt, they'd laugh their ass off. It would be like Nixon wearing tie-dye. Not plausible._

Hippie-style?  _Probably not. I'm all for hippies, but that's not me, either. And I'd look ridiculous with long hair._

Fuck it. He'd ask Lucy. She almost certainly knew more about fashion than him, and he wanted to dress to please her.

 _More likely,_ he thought, _she doesn't give a sweet damn how I dress. She's not shallow enough to worry about appearances._

 


	3. Chapter 3

Lucy regarded herself in the bathroom mirror, just out of the shower, her wavy black hair wrapped in a towel: her face, a little wider than she'd have liked; her piercing, dark eyes - everyone always noticed her eyes first. Nothing to object to there.

She hated her nose. Like her face, it was a little too wide. Her mouth - also wide, but with sensual, full lips, and no trace of the constant sneer she'd worn as a child.

Somehow, it didn't come together. It wasn't ugly, just not particularly pretty, either. It just missed. A few slight adjustments and it might be exotic, or perhaps winsome. As it was...

She considered her neck. A little thick; not dainty. But in proportion to her face, she supposed. She couldn't complain about her shoulders.

Her breasts she actually quite liked: ample, but not overripe. Tasteful.

Her torso - perfectly normal, perhaps a bit thick. Her legs as well. Child-bearing hips. Beautifully feminine, at least by the standards of most cultures throughout most of human history. 

She should have felt good about what she was seeing, but the current American standard of beauty - which ran toward willowy blondes with outsized breasts - was being shoved in her face on a daily basis, and she had absorbed it. She was aware of having done so - her studies in psychology had given her a name for it: internalization - but she could not excise it from her mind. Not when the "pretty" girls regarded her with contempt. Not when the boys at school never gave her a second glance.

Except for Charlie. 

_Charlie thinks I'm beautiful. And he loves my body._

_He's going to see it really soon, too._

Her reflection grinned lasciviously at her.

She had come to that decision several days ago. They'd been dating for a year, and both had turned 17 in April - hardly an inappropriate age to start "going all the way," as it was still generally referred to, in hushed voices, in Hennepin Falls, New York.

Somehow, the 60s had come and gone without any visible effect on the local culture. Only the "bad kids" referred to the sexual act as "fucking," and (it was assumed) only they were indulging in it.

If so, she and Charlie were going to turn in their goody-two-shoes badges any day now. She hadn't discussed it with Charlie, but she hardly expected him to object. It was just a matter of logistics. Neither one's house was ever fully unoccupied except on the occasion of Saturday family outings and Sunday mornings at church. Further, no one in her small circle of friends had it any better. Housewives patroled during the day, siblings on parents' nights out.

Then there was the matter of contraception.

She couldn't get the Pill without her parents' consent - and fat chance of that. And condoms? Hennepin Falls was a small town. If Lucy bought condoms at Phineas Chase's pharmacy, the sweet old man, out of concern for her physical and moral well-being, would be on the phone with her mother before she'd closed the door on the way out. And if the transaction were observed by anyone else, it would be a scandal within an hour. By the next day, every adult woman she encountered would turn up her nose or glare at her in judgment, every man would leer at her, and every teenager aside from her close friends would call her a slut (her friends would only be thinking it).

Lucy dressed while mulling over her conundrum. In the interest of getting Charlie a little worked up, she chose the sexiest garments in her possession - all borrowed on the sly from friends with less conservative parents. A skirt that showed a little thigh; a tank top that showed more than a little cleavage; sandals with matching anklets on her left leg; bracelets matching the anklets; a peace-sign necklace borrowed from a second cousin from sinful San Francisco. 

She marveled at the effect. The young woman in the mirror was an alien being. The only jewelry her parents had ever allowed her was a simple silver crucifix necklace. She hadn't shown her knees or worn a tank top in public since she hit puberty.

Her parents had had visions of her one day donning a nun's habit; but when it became clear that Lucy could not be cured of her desire for secular knowledge - especially that psychology voodoo - they concentrated on Linus. The boy was every bit as intelligent as his sister and took to religion as a fish to water. 

The hippie flourishes weren't exactly _her_. But they didn't miss by much.

The effect was - what was that word? Oh, right - sexy. It was going to drive Charlie crazy.

Other men, she assumed, would look right past her. Or worse, silently judge her. _"W_ _hy would a chick built like that wear a short skirt? Jeez, she probably thinks that getup makes her look hot. Idiot"_

No, not "idiot," "pig."

And not the men. The women. Women were the worst.

 _It's not their_ fault, she reminded herself, _It's how they're conditioned by society._

But there was no getting around it - a man might insult you, make you feel like shit. But a woman would reach down your throat and shred your soul.

These thoughts passed through her mind in the 5 seconds or so she spent twirling and posing for her bedroom mirror. Upon reaching her sad conclusion she became still and approached it, peering into her own eyes from just a few inches away, looking for her soul, or at least its reflection. 

She found it.

To those critical men and soul-destroying women, she said aloud, "Fuck all of you. I'm beautiful. Charlie says so."

 _Oh yeah_ , she thought,  _he's gonna get some of this real soon._  


	4. Chapter 4

Satisfied with her ensemble, Lucy undressed and stuffed the immodest garments in a bookbag which she dropped out of her second-floor bedroom window. It landed quietly behind a bush. She donned her usual summer clothes - sneakers, jeans (not very ladylike, in her mother's estimation, but at least they covered everything) and a loose, billowy blouse.

Her heart pounded as she descended the stairs to the living room, where her mother sat next to Linus, repairing the cuff of one of her husband's slacks. A PBS documentary about Charles Coughlin was running on the television. Linus took notes; Carol Van Pelt nodded along with the narration, liking what she was hearing. Disturbingly, her expression did not darken as a section of one of the controversial radio preacher's more antisemitic broadcasts was played. In fact, she seemed to grin just a bit more. (Linus, on the other hand, looked positively ill.)

There was so much Lucy could have said to her about this, but there was no point. Her mother was who she was - a fundamentally decent person whose intellect had been raped by Catholicism. 

Instead, she simply announced, "I'm going out to see Charlie," and kept moving toward the door.

Lucy's hand was on the doorknob when her mother said "Hold on. When will you be back?"

Go for broke. "I don't know. Midnight?"

"Oh, really?" her mother asked in her deadliest sing-song cadence. "And what exactly are you planning to do for twelve hours."

"Talk, hang out with friends, eat, walk in the park,"  _plot how to lose our virginities._  "You know, the usual, just more of it."

Carol Van Pelt regarded her daughter as a hawk regards its prey. Lucy felt her mother's gaze bore into her in search of the truth.

Carol knew what Lucy had on her mind. She'd been young once, yearning to sin. But she also knew Lucy's conundrum. There was no way the girl could get away with it in this town, and her daughter was nothing if not an intelligent and disciplined thinker. The young woman did not share her mother's deep and abiding faith - the faith that had long ago brought Carol McWhorter back from the brink a sinful pre-marital encounter with her future husband, Roger Van Pelt (oh, how she missed the desire that had fueled that close call); but surely her powers of reason had brought Lucy to the same conclusion. She could trust her daughter not to do anything stupid.

"Make it ten o'clock. I don't want you snoring in church tomorrow."

Lucy, who had actually been expecting an 8 or 9 pm curfew, was pleased, but she wasn't going to let her mother know it. She sighed. "Fine. Ten o'clock. See you later."

She made her way to the sidewalk and turned left toward Charlie's house three blocks away. When she was sure she was no longer within sight of the living room window, she turned left again, toward the backyard, and retrieved her backpack. She experienced a frisson of fear, realizing that news of her public display of immodesty could make its way to her parents as easily as the contraception purchase she had considered.

She didn't have to go through with this.

Her rebellious streak won out.  _Screw it. I am who I am. If I get grounded, I'll just make myself so subtly annoying to have around, they'll let me back out just to be rid of me_.

The next part of her plan was the most frightening. 

Between Lucy's neighborhood and Charlie's was a small wooded area. She found the place where the foliage was thickest, where she was least likely to be seen changing into her sexier clothes. She was halfway through this process when, as she feared might happen, she heard a group of boys approaching on the nearby footpath. 

She ducked behind a tree and prayed to no one in particular that they stayed on the path instead of exploring the area. She suffered yet another thrill of fear as three boys she recognized as a set of particularly obnoxious brothers stopped within ten feet of her so that one of them could urinate. She froze and willed herself to sprout leaves. 

To her immense relief, rather than try to find a private spot, the boy simply turned his back on his companions and peed on an azalea. _How many of these scares before I have an actual heart attack?_ She had a sudden, unbidden vision of her heart dropping out of her chest so fast that it plowed through her intestines and kept going, finally shooting out of her vagina onto the ground. The effort of stifling her laughter at the sick image nearly caused her to burst a blood vessel in her eye.

Once the boys were out of earshot, she threw on her blouse and jewelry and made her way out of the woods to Charlie's house, trying to be inconspicuous despite being in full view on anyone who might happen to look in her direction. Deep down, she realized, she was embarrassed to be seen like this. The joy of being with her boyfriend would be tainted by the judgemental stare of every adult she passed on the street. _Lucy Van Pelt, of all people, dressing like that. Her parents must be beside themselves._ Anywhere else, no one would raise an eyebrow at her clothing.  _God, I hate this town. Ten minutes after we graduate, Charlie and will be on the next train out._

When she arrived at the Brown residence, Charlie was sitting on the porch waiting for her. When he saw her, his eyes widened and his jaw dropped just a bit. Lucy soaked it in, but feigned nonchalance. "Ready to go?" she asked as she approached him.  _Thank God he's out here waiting. If I'd knocked and one of his parents had answered..._ She hadn't thought this through. What the hell  _had_ she been thinking?

Charlie stood. "Y-yeah," he stammered. He wasn't sure what to do with the messages his eyes were sending him. Lucy happily let him feel her up when they made out these days, but he'd never seen this much of her skin. It startled him so, he hadn't even the wherewithal to yearn to reach out and touch it. 

Lucy meanwhile, spent several seconds lost in her panic. As much as fun as she'd thought it would be to get Charlie all worked up and amorous, there would be consequences. She might as well have thrown further caution to the wind, bought condoms, and made love to Charlie behind a bush somewhere. At least they'd have something to remember when her parents forbid her to see him again until she was 18.

When she pulled herself out of it - how long had she spent catastrophizing? - she was relieved to see that Charlie was still a deer in the headlights himself. To break the spell, she kissed him on the cheek. 

This woke him up. "You look amazing," he said. "I-I-I mean you always look amazing, but... wow!"

"Thanks," Lucy said, as she hugged him tightly to herself. She felt his arousal and gasped.

 _OK_ , she chided herself,  _take it easy. You've got all day. At this rate, he'll be dead before lunch. And incidentally, tonight's not the night, remember. He's not getting laid. Keeping him this aroused all day would be positively cruel._

Lucy backed off. "Sorry," she said, "I'm feeling really frisky today. Maybe it's the outfit. Didn't mean to overwhelm you."

Charlie laughed nervously. "I've never seen this side of you before. I like it. I mean, it's a little scary, but in a good way, like a roller-coaster."

As they walked to Hennepin Falls' tiny commercial center, Charlie did his best not to stare at her. He could manage it for about five seconds at a time. He couldn't get over her chest. Not only could he see the top part of her actual breasts, he could follow their outline down to where her tank top's neckline covered them, and could gaze down into the darkness, for there was a gap. And once in a while, the sunlight would hit that gap just right...

Lucy knew he was doing this, but it was exactly the effect she had been hoping for. She didn't mind being ogled when it wasn't some creepy stranger. Charlie loved her. He could stare all he wanted.

They reached the inexplicably named Jenny's Complicated Life Diner. Established in 1922, it's original owner, Reggie Masterson, had refused to explain the meaning of the name, or even who Jenny might have been, to anyone. His secret died with him in 1961. Lucy suspected that the name really didn't mean anything, and Reggie Masterson had just enjoyed fucking with people.

She could respect that.

The diner was busy, as befitted the only large, inexpensive eating establishment in town on the first day of summer vacation. The place was filled with familiar faces from school, most stuffing themselves with the diner's signature dish - a pile of cheese fries you'd need a sherpa to climb. (For $1.95. Lucy had no idea how Jenny's stayed in business - or in potatoes, for that matter).

Sitting in the diner's lone remaining available booth, they could survey the entire establishment. None of their friends were present - not surprising considering the scarcity of that commodity. They did notice a few individuals they thought of as enemies - a popular girl who never missed an opportunity to address Lucy as "Fatty," and a bully who had haunted Charlie since grade school. They were seated together. Charlie hadn't kept track, but he suspected they were dating. The perfect couple.

Oddly, the bully seemed to be staring straight at Charlie, but with none of his usual menace. No, there was a sort of menace to his gaze - he was leering, not at Charlie, but at Lucy. He liked what he saw, but his expression was predatory. Lucy noticed as well and was torn between the vindication of being ogled by a stranger and the terror of being regarded as a piece of meat by a Neanderthal who, let's face it, could take out her boyfriend with a single blow and drag her back to his cave by her hair.

His companion noticed this exchange and turned to see with whom he was cheating on her with his eyes. Lucy experienced a purer form of vindication when the girl recognized "Fatty" as the object of her boyfriend's lustful gaze. Her eye's flared, then widened further when she registered how Lucy was dressed. Sweet Jesus, the egghead was genuinely hot. No longer a simple object of derision, Lucy Van "Fatty" Pelt was Competition. 

The girl's features hardened, and she slapped her boyfriend on the shoulder to break his concentration. An argument ensued. The two stood, their pile of fries barely touched, and walked briskly out of the restaurant, bickering and pointedly looking anywhere but at the Jezebel's booth.

The incident left Charlie violently conflicted. On the one hand, it had evoked a possessiveness and jealousy of Lucy he had never experienced before. His enemy coveted his - and he was stunned at himself for thinking of her this way - property. 

On the other, it was a victory: his bully had lost. Charlie was the local alpha male, for it was clear the miscreant had not been the only boy eyeing Lucy with desire. Charlie never thought of his girlfriend as anything but the most beautiful girl in the world, but for once his peers agreed. The little dumbshow of girls smacking their transfixed boyfriends on the shoulder - odd that the gesture was somehow universal - was playing out all through the diner. 

 _It shouldn't matter what other guys think_ , Charlie reminded himself. But there was no helping it - he had never been the envy of anyone else, even among his friends. He was the sadsack, the loveable loser. Surely he could be forgiven for reveling momentarily in the spotlight. He'd paid his dues.

All of this transpired in under a minute. Lost in their thoughts, Charlie and Lucy returned to the outside world to find themselves grinning nervously at each other. 

"That was..." began Charlie.

"Yeah, it was," agreed Lucy. They laughed in relief and amusement until their waitress interrupted them, apologized for doing so, and asked them if they were ready to order.

"Sure," said Charlie. "Do you guys serve cheese fries?"

Lucy snorted at this. Charlie was not exactly humorless, but he was hardly a font of jokes, and almost never rose to actual insouciance.  _This is a good trend_ , she thought.

The waitress was unflappable. "I'll see if I can special order some for you." She took their drink orders, and the menus they had not even glanced at. She headed back into the maelstrom of the packed diner, a million things to do, her absence revealing the small figure that had been waiting patiently, directly behind her.

"Marcie!" Charlie and Lucy shouted in delight. They had not seen the reclusive girl in at least two years. After sixth grade, she had been placed in a "special" school program that separated her from mainstream students, and she had ceased to seek out her childhood friends. She was rarely seen in public. Based on her psychology studies, Lucy suspected that she knew what her friend's diagnosis was. 

She slid over to make room for Marcie. "Will you join us?"

It took Marcie a moment to reply, stunned, as she was, by Lucy's uncharacteristic attire. "What? Oh, sure, of course."

Lucy noticed some reticence in Marcie's reply, but she wore a goofy smile as she sat down next to her.

"God, it's great to see you guys," said Marcie. "We really need to catch up." Marcie wasn't good at reading social cues, but her friends holding hands across the table, fingers entwined, was hard to miss. "Hey, are you guys... dating?" she asked. The idea clearly amused her.

"Yeah," said Charlie, "for about a year now."

"Man," marveled Marcie. "Who'd've thought?" She chuckled.

"Surprised the hell out of _me_ ," said Charlie. "But we have this amazing relationship. It's... what can I say, we're in love." He gazed at Lucy, noting that even a year later, he was still surprised. Who, indeed, would have thought?

"Good for you. Seriously, that's awesome." Marcie's smile faded. She sighed. "Personally, I'm having no luck in that department."

"I know it's tough," Lucy said. "You've always had trouble socializing. I hope you don't mind me asking, but you're autistic, aren't you?"

"I don't mind. Yes - good guess, by the way."

"Well, I study that stuff."

"Really? Heh. Do you still give out psychiatric advice for five cents?"

Lucy winced inwardly, reminded of her childhood cruelty. "Nope. My advice is free now, and worth every cent."

"Hey, don't say that," said Charlie. To Marcie, he insisted "She's a genius. Really."

"Well then, said Marcie, "maybe you can help me through a crisis. See, it's not the social skills." Marcie glanced nervously from side to side. In a hushed voice, she said: "I can trust you guys, right?"

"Of course," said Charlie and Lucy in unison.

"Well, the thing is," she took a deep breath, and whispered, "I'm gay."

Charlie and Lucy locked eyes. They did their best to stifle their reaction but didn't even come close. They giggled uncontrollably.

Marcie was crushed.

"It's not funny!"

"N-No. No, it's not," said Lucy, gasping with the effort of suppressing her laughter. She took her friend's hand. "It's totally fine."

"So what's the deal?"

Charlie took the poor girl's hand as well "Marcie," he said, tenderly, "everybody knows that."

"What?!" Marcie, scanned her environment, terrified and confused. Fight or flight.

"Sorry. I mean, not _everybody_. Just, you know, the old gang. We always knew you were different, in some specific way we didn't have a word for."

Marcie couldn't decide on an emotion. Her face was a kaleidoscope. 

"But _I_ didn't have any idea, back then. I mean, all my crushes were on boys."

"What about Patty," asked Lucy. "You used to follow her around, call her 'sir.'"

"That had nothing to do with my... orientation. Or hers." She smiled despite herself. "We _both_ had crushes on Charlie, actually."

"No," said Charlie. "No way."

"It's true," said Marcie, grinning at him. "We thought you were really cute. And nice."

"Man, I wish you'd said something," said Charlie, shaking his head in both wonderment and frustration. "My self-esteem could have really used the boost."

"Well, I was too shy," said Marcie. "But Patty flirted with you constantly. You were completely oblivious. By the time we were 11 or so, she was regularly crying on my shoulder about it."  

Charlie felt a rush of shame "I'm so sorry. I guess it just never occurred to me that a girl could like me. I know we were just kids, but I feel like I should apologize." But Patty's family had moved out of state four years previously. "Do you know how to get in touch with her?"

Marcie sighed. "No. She wouldn't tell me. I think I must have been unconsciously giving off some kind of lesbian signals that freaked her out."

All three were silent for a time. 

Finally, Marcie continued. "So, just to review, everybody I knew, by age 7 or 8, had a better gaydar than I do now. Amazing. How can you be gay and have no gaydar?" Marcie slumped, dejected, in her seat. 

Lucy encouraged her to sit back up and put her arm around her. Marcie put her head tentatively on Lucy's shoulder.

"It's driving me nuts," she said. "I don't know a single other lesbian. I can't be the only one, even in a town this small. But I've never met any."

"Seriously? You've never met another lesbian? Ever?" said Lucy, astonished - though perhaps she shouldn't have been, she thought. Who in their right mind would be _out_ in Hennepin Falls?

"Not that I know of. Lucy, this right here, " she snuggled closer, "is the most action I've ever gotten. It's the most intimate I've ever been with another woman. Another human being, really."

"Well, don't worry, we can do this as long as you like."

Charlie listened to this exchange intently, but his mind couldn't help but wander.  _Two girls liked me back then and I didn't even know it._

And he'd always liked Marcie. She had been perhaps the lone mellow, comforting presence in a peer group full of intense personalities. Patty had been cool, too, but he'd always thought of her as one of the guys.

Marcie's eyes were closed. Good. He was staring and didn't want to make her uncomfortable. She seemed almost unchanged since childhood. Taller, of course, but still very short - 5 feet nothing, tops; just a bit pudgy in a cute way (baby fat?); The same style of cap and glasses she'd always worn.   
  
He considered her dilemma. She couldn't exactly place a personals ad in the Hennepin Falls Gazette. He couldn't think of a damn thing he could do to help.

Lucy stroked Marcie's hair; Marcie was practically purring.

He hated to interrupt her reverie, but he was concerned that a public display of affection between two girls in this setting was unwise. "Hey, how about we attack these fries before they get cold," he said.

They had made a serious dent in Mount Fromage before admitting that they were defeated, like so many before them. Charlie left $4.00 on the table and escorted his companions out of the restaurant. None of them had spoken in some time.

"So, um, what do you guys want to do now. Lucy and I were going to see a movie at noon." Marcie, he noticed, was still gazing adoringly at Lucy. "But we don't have to," he added. How far did Marcie think this business with Lucy was going to go?

"We could go back to my place," said Marcie, quickly. Hearing herself, she added, "Um, you know, hang out, talk, listen to music."

Seriously, how far?


	5. Chapter 5

Marcie's house was directly opposite the diner, on the other side of the town's large park and playground. They crossed the grounds, frequently dodging and weaving to avoid collisions with young children running amuck and older kids playing sports. It was the first day of summer vacation, the weather was perfect, and the park was packed.

As Charlie chatted with Marcie, Lucy pondered her friend's problem. She had spent a great deal of time studying human sexuality from psychological, sociological, and recovering Catholic points of view. She knew something about gay and lesbian subcultures, though that knowledge was strictly academic.

"You know," she said when there was a break in her friends' conversation, "there are signs and symbols gay people use to identify themselves to others. I know the Greek letter Lambda is associated with the lesbian community. Maybe you could wear Lambda earrings or put the symbol on your backpack in magic marker or something. Someone might notice."

"It's a good idea. But I don't think the local jewelry shop carries a line of accessories for today's dyke on the go."

Charlie was taken aback by Marcie's use of the word "dyke," which he understood to be a cruel slur. Then again, many black people called each other "nigger," sometimes as a term of affection. _The world must look very different when you're being oppressed. Different rules apply_ , he thought.

Lucy, for her part, was unfazed, and as Charlie became lost in his thoughts of what a cruel world he inhabited, where so many people were not free to be themselves, she and Marcie continued to strategize, with little success, as to how Marcie could safely find members of her peer group. 

Still, Marcie was chipper as they reached her house, an adorable Cape Cod meticulously maintained by her obsessive/compulsive parents.

It was beautiful but somehow terrifying. Everything about the house was perfectly aligned and coordinated. Identical flower boxes with identically arranged flowers lined the front of the structure. The grass appeared, at first glance, to be artificial turf, but was in fact mowed every three days by Marcie's father. In between, her mother would prowl the lawn, searching for blades slightly taller than the others, and adjust them individually with a pair of scissors.

Marcie led her friends around the side to a staircase that led to a door on the second, slant-roofed level.

"I live in the attic. It's basically a private apartment. I have everything I need there - other than for school, I don't have to go out if I don't want to." She unlocked the door.

Once Charlie and Lucy's eyes adjusted to the relative darkness, they... kept adjusting. The room was confusing. In contrast to the rest of the house, it was a masterpiece of chaos. 

It ran the entire width and depth of the structure, but only in a twelve-foot wide area in the center could one stand fully upright. The slanted walls were covered in posters, drawings, and handwritten notes. Seemingly random objects hung by delicate chains: a birdhouse, a lantern, jewelry, small wire baskets full of Legos, hard candies, photographs, and other items they could not identify at a glance. 

Other than the hangings, bound by gravity, not a single item was aligned with the floor. All were tilted at random angles, and many overlapped.

Marcie's parents never came up there - it gave them palpitations.

At one end of the room was a queen sized bed covered in riotously patterned quilts (all askew); at the other, dozens of crates filled with books, records, clothing, food and soda bottles. Mixed in among the crates was a small refrigerator.

"Don't you love it?" said Marcie. She was nervous about something but clearly took pride in her decorative skills.

 _Man_ , thought Lucy,  _this girl's going to be the subject of my Master's thesis_.

Marcie fidgeted. "You're, um, actually the first people I've ever had up here," she said.

"It's giving you a panic attack, isn't it?" said Lucy.

Marcie focused her gaze on her wall. That seemed to steady her. "Yeah. It is. But I'm also really happy. I think I can handle it."

Lucy hugged her. "You'll be fine. I know you need to be alone most of the time. But whenever you don't, let us know - we'll be here."

"I'd like that," said Marcie. She tensed up again. "So, um, what do you say we pick up that snuggling where we left off - but on the bed?" she asked, utterly failing to sound casual doing so.

Lucy smiled nervously.

"Don't worry," said Marcie, "I won't try to seduce you, though I may feel you up a bit. You know, platonically."

"OK, platonically."

Charlie retreated to the other end of the room to examine the contents of the crates and give his friends some privacy.  _No, really, how far is this going to go?_

Let's see what kind of music she likes.

Marcie's record collection was fascinating. It was eclectic and full of extremes. He flipped through one crate, marveling at the sequence: Led Zeppelin, Camelot: Original Cast Recording, Miles Davis, Simon & Garfunkel, Bach (J.S., C.P.E., and P.D.Q.), Moby Grape, AC/DC, Yes, The New Christy Minstrels, The White Album, Aretha Franklin...

He heard murmurs from the other end of the room - he was half expecting them to segue into moans. Turning that thought over in his head, he realized that he felt no jealousy, nor was he in any way uneasy about the prospect of Lucy having sex with Marcie before she did with him. He would be stunned, but not upset. His experience at the diner notwithstanding, he was not a jealous man.

 _Sure_ , he thought.  _But what if Lucy were in bed with another_ guy _?_

He had to admit, his inner monologue had a point. He tried to imagine a situation where they encountered another boy - perhaps an old friend - who for some reason needed to make love to a girl - any girl - the way Marcie did. Would he really be that sanguine about it? He had to admit he had no idea.

Regardless, it didn't sound like the encounter was progressing in that direction. Marcie was quietly weeping ( _poor thing, I almost hope Lucy_ does _make love to her_ , Charlie found himself thinking), and Lucy was saying "She's out there, and we'll find her. I promise."

Next crate: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Doors, The Mamas and the Papas. Finally, a recognizable pattern.


	6. Chapter 6

Charlie sat on the edge of the bed, next to Lucy. He was somewhat surprised to see that Lucy had removed her tank top. Her bra I didn't reveal much more of her breasts than the top, but it did reveal her belly, which he had never seen. He was in heaven.

So, it seemed, was Marcie - she was asleep, smiling radiantly.

"So, um...," he began.

"Yeah, so I let her feel me up a bit," said Lucy. "It wasn't uncomfortable - I remember doing that with one of my friends when we started to develop. Of course, that was just curiosity. This was... more than that." She closed her eyes, as she often did when working things out in her head. "I don't think I could have gone any further, though."

"Well," Charlie said, chuckling, "that's still pretty far for a first date. We didn't get to that point for about six months. And you kept your shirt on."

"Yeah. Sorry about that," said Lucy. "But she's in pain. I felt like, I don't know, she deserved a treat." She closed her eyes again. "I didn't mind. It was nice. It didn't turn me on, but it was pleasant enough."

"Well, if you can't go further than that, we've got to help her find a girlfriend."

Lucy studied him for a moment, grinning. "So you'd be fine if I went all the way with her – even before I did with you?”

"Uh, yeah, actually." Charlie was silent for a moment, thinking. They’d been "trading fours," as the jazz-men say, all day in this regard. "Jeez, I wonder how I got this open-minded. My parents are less conservative than yours, but they're not exactly into free love."

Lucy kissed him on the forehead. "I have trained you well, my darling."

Lucy, of course, had had her harsh religious indoctrination to rebel against, and the result had been an equal opposite reaction.

She was undecided on the existence of God but rejected organized religion as emphatically as it had been inflicted upon her. She thought of herself as essentially monogamous, but did not object to polyamory; similarly, she was straight as a board but had never bought into the homophobia endemic to Christianity.

When she'd started dating Charlie, he'd had no opinion on any of these matters. But his kindness and compassion for others led him to adopt Lucy's point of view.

She wondered if they, like Marcie, were alone in Hennepin Falls. It was a town where politics was not spoken of, except perhaps behind closed doors. Lucy's outfit, with its hippie flourishes, was as close to a political statement she had ever seen anyone make in the town. Perhaps it would inspire fellow travelers to seek her out.

"So, um, room for one more?" said Charlie.

Lucy slid over to make room for him. "Thought you'd never ask."

With only that quick gesture as a segue, they kissed emphatically. The situation was inherently exciting - they'd never shared a bed before, never made out lying down; and Lucy had never exposed so much skin to him. It was one step closer to...

They stopped abruptly, both having had the same thought. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Lucy said.

"That this could be the place? Yeah." Charlie let this thought sink in. He grinned. "So, you _have_ been making plans."

"Well, trying to. I mean, there's still the matter of getting condoms without causing a scandal."

Charlie's smile faded. He hadn't thought of that. "Crap. You're right. Sweet Jesus, we've got to get out of this town."

Both fell silent. Lucy, having run the scenario through her head a hundred times, simply brooded, and thought of Marcie. The girl was, she was sure, kind enough to lend them her apartment for an afternoon. But could she ask? Wouldn't it be salt on the wound of Marcie's loneliness?

Charlie was lost in thoughts of making love to Lucy. He'd had that fantasy a thousand times, but now it had a setting that was an actual possibility. Progress - but before the fantasy ran its course, he thought of the contraceptive issue, and it seemed insurmountable.

"Look," he said, "I can wait. After we graduate, we can leave town, I can go to some community college close to whatever Ivy League school you get into. Or I can get a job to support us. I mean, it's not like I have some big dream to chase. Once we're out of here, we can 'live in sin,' and no one can stop us." _Or we can get married_ , he thought. Somehow, he could not bring himself to speak the words, though he had no doubt it was what he wanted.

Lucy's rebellious side bristled at the idea, but it made sense. Hunker down, don't make waves, tough it out for another year, make class valedictorian as she was on course to do, then start a new life at whatever university offered her a full scholarship.

Her parents had already committed every spare cent to sending Linus to Canisius College, so their iconoclast daughter was on her own. Petty, perhaps, but she didn't blame them - Linus was a genius at theology, and genuinely devoted to it. He deserved the kind of education a top Jesuit school could provide.

(She also suspected that by the time he left Canisius, he'd be much more of a free-thinker. The Jesuits were the intellectual wing of the Catholic Church; their religious studies were not limited to Catholicism or even Christianity. It would be good for him, and she and he would have a lot to talk about, for once.)

Lucy stroked Charlie's cheek. Peach fuzz. Charlie had never had to shave, had never even developed the ragged mustache most boys did at the onset of puberty. Her little man-child - how naive he'd been a year ago. But he'd soaked up all of the knowledge she'd shared with him - and not just by rote. He'd assimilated it into his world-view and personality. He understood. And he thought he was dumb. Poor, sweet baby. She'd cure him of that misapprehension. She'd teach him to love himself, no matter how many impromptu therapy sessions it took.

Half waking, Marcie rolled over in Lucy’s direction, winding up flush against Lucy’s back with her arm draped over Lucy’s shoulder. Her fingers idly stroked Lucy’s chest, in between her breasts.

Marcie was gently snoring, but Lucy thought this might have been a conscious ploy to feel her up again. _On the other hand, if it were_ , Lucy reasoned, _she’d probably have her hand on my boob_. _Plus, she was fairly sure that it was not in Marcie’s character to play that kind of game._

Charlie looked at Lucy, as if to say, “You’re OK with this?”

Lucy shrugged. It put an end to their makeout session - she wasn’t ready for a threesome with one unconscious participant – but Charlie seemed ready to let it be, as was she.

In the end, they, too, slept, entwined, safe in Marcie’s confusing room, in her embrace, in her intriguing bed.


	7. Chapter 7

Lucy’s dreams were vivid and confusing.

Unsurprisingly, the common theme of her dreams that afternoon was sex. They were not erotic dreams – her mind was clearly processing the events of the day to make some sense of them.

She dreamed of Marcie wearing Charlie’s underwear and sporting his erection.

She watched – from a distance, a mere observer - as Charlie made love to her on Marcie’s bed. But she was soon replaced by Marcie herself. Charlie looked confused but not exactly upset by the turn of events.

Charlie watched as she and Marcie made love, but it was 8-year old Charlie in his baseball cap and that jagged-striped shirt he loved to wear.

There was a simple, lovely flying dream – those were always nice. She didn’t usually fly naked, particularly when her flight took her into low Earth orbit, but she found the experience refreshing.

And there was one entirely stupid dream: She was playing Pong against a gorilla that kept changing color every 10 seconds, and it took place in a future dystopia where taffy was illegal.

That one was so annoying, she willed herself awake.

The quality of light streaming through the high, round window above the bed had changed drastically. Not quite sunset, but getting there. She checked the clock on Marcie’s bedside table. 7:15.

 _That was one helluva nap_ , thought Lucy.

She was too bleary and hungry to consider how this would affect her plans for the rest of the evening. She carefully extricated herself from her friends’ embraces and tiptoed over to the food supplies at the other end of the room.

She sorted through three crates before she hit the jackpot: Yodels, her absolute favorite, the king of Swiss rolls, the Swiss roll of kings.

As she devoured two of the three remaining packets ( _note to self: buy Marcie a fresh box_ ) she surveyed one of Marcie’s crates full of books. It was mostly sci-fi – Clarke, Heinlein, Asimov. There was a heavily worn copy of Stranger in a Strange Land, containing several bookmarks. She’d always meant to read it; she’d heard it was quite influential.

Marcie and Charlie were beginning to stir. As Lucy headed back to the bed, she heard Charlie, then Marcie, say “hi.” Both were a little surprised but not alarmed to find themselves in each other’s arms. Marcie kissed his forehead, as Lucy often did. No surprise, he had a very kissable forehead. Charlie returned the gesture.

“We should have done that ten years ago,” said Charlie as he and Marcie sat up.

“Definitely a missed opportunity,” she agreed.

Lucy found her backpack and changed into her more modest clothes. Somehow, she did not feel the need to hide in the bathroom to do this. In view of the intimacy they had shared that afternoon, it seemed silly.

Charlie opened his mouth to speak, but Marcie placed her hand over it. She whispered “don’t ruin this for me.” _Fair enough_ , thought Charlie. They both did their best to memorize every detail of their briefly near-naked friend, while utterly failing to hide the fact that they were staring.

Lucy laughed. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

“Next time,” said Marcie.


	8. Chapter 8

The diner was less crowded for dinner than it had been for lunch, and the clientele were mostly adults. The friends found a booth near the back with no neighboring diners – all the better to possibly discuss intimate things.

At first it seemed that there would be no conversation. They spent a few simply minutes looking at each other giggling, raising eyebrows, making silly faces. Eventually their silliness became its own joke, and by the time their food arrived, all three were breathless with laughter.

After taking a bite of her burger, Lucy said to Marcie “So Charlie and I are planning to leave town right after graduation. Wanna join…?”

“Yes!” said Marcie. “Where are we going?”

Charlie laughed. “We don’t know yet. Lucy’s holding out for a full scholarship somewhere.”

“Can we please leave now?”

“Sorry,” said Lucy, “they don’t give scholarships to high school dropouts.”

“So where are you applying?”

“Well, all of the Ivies, of course, plus places like Northeastern and Wellesley. Heh. I hear that if you’re not a lesbian when you enter Wellesley, you will be by the time you graduate. Even if you’re a guy.”

Charlie shot soda out of his nose laughing. “Ow! Shit! Ow! Pass me a napkin, somebody.”

Lucy complied.

Marcie was grimly determined. “We’re going to Wellesley. If they won’t pay for you, _I_ will.”

“Marcie, it’s just a joke,” said Lucy.

“Do they make that joke about any other colleges?”

Lucy had to admit that they did not.

“We’re going to Wellesley. Or at least _you’re_ going to Wellesley. Charlie and I will work to support you. It’ll be tough, but worth it because it won’t be more than a semester before you’re at least bi-.”

Lucy chuckled. “OK, I’ll see what I can do. But seriously…”

“I am entirely serious,” said Marcie.

“I know. But if I can’t swing Wellesley, there’s always Berkeley, Oberlin, Cornell… It may still be 1957 in Hennepin Falls, but it’s still 19 _67_ at a _lot_ of Universities.”

“No deal. If I’ve gotta wait a year, it’s Wellesley.”

Lucy hung her head a shook it, chuckling. “OK, Wellesley it is. Unless it’s something else. Final offer.”

“Aw, who am I kidding? I’d follow you anywhere,” Marcie conceded, taking a sip of her soda, which she somehow managed to do suggestively.

Lucy raised an eyebrow at her, unfazed, but Charlie blushed. He checked himself: _yep, still OK with Marcie trying to seduce my girlfriend. In fact, it could be a lot of fun watching the game unfold._

He’d actually gotten a bit aroused watching the little exchange. _They know it, too,_ he realized. They were watching him, amused.

He changed the subject. “Y-You know, you should probably go to school, too, Marcie. You’re really smart. What do you think you’d major in?”

Now Marcie raised an eyebrow. _What do you think?_

Charlie sighed. “I mean other than that. What do you want to do with your life?”

Marcie stared thoughtfully at the overhead lamp for over thirty seconds. Her companions exchanged glances, wondering if this was normal Marcie behavior. Charlie was about to give up and suggest yet another subject of conversation when she said “I don’t know. Something in developmental psycholinguistics, theoretical physics, semiotics, European history, marine biology, macroeconomics, graphic design, English lit; that kind of thing.”

“That kind of thing,” thought Charlie. He fell silent, trying figure out what single category could accommodate all of those disciplines. It didn’t help that he had no idea what semiotics was.

“Ooh, I love semiotics,” said Lucy. “I’ve read a couple books on the subject. I don’t claim to have much of a grasp on it, but it’s fascinating.”

Marcie lit up. “Which ones did you read?”

“Well, first I read ‘Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes,’ because I loved the idea of this weird French intellectual interviewing himself. Then I read Eco’s ‘A Theory of Semiotics.’ I guess I kind of did that ass-backwards, now that I think of it.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Marcie. “No one can even agree on a definition of semiotics. There’s no wrong entry point.”

“What’s semiotics?” asked Charlie, with some trepidation. He had a feeling he wouldn’t understand the answer.

“Well,” said Marcie, “you see that thing on the men’s room door?”

He turned to see the simplified, instantly recognizable, flat plastic figure of a man hanging on the door at an odd angle. (The screw attaching it at the head had come loose and fallen off.

“Sure,” he confirmed.

“That’s semiotics,” said Marcie. “Well, the study of it is.”

Charlie was lost.

 _Make a joke._ “So you can get a degree in the study of men’s room symbols?” he said. He was fairly sure it wasn’t _that_ simple.

Lucy laughed – making sure to communicate to Charlie that she knew he was joking. _This is exactly the kind of thing that makes him feel insecure about his intelligence_ , she thought.

“Let me see if I can explain it – I like a challenge.” She took a deep breath. “Semiotics is the study of how things are given meaning. Not how words get definitions or vice versa. How images or objects or even actions or processes come to have meaning above and beyond the names we give them.”

Charlie was wearing his trigonometry homework expression.

“Marcie, help me out here,” said Lucy.

“Sure. A simpler way to say it is that semiotics is the study of signs – not necessarily literal signs like the guy on the bathroom door or street signs; but signs in the larger sense of things other than words that represent concepts, thoughts, actions... It’s about symbols and their connotations, and how those connotations become associated with them.”

“O…K… I think I’m following you. But is that really a whole field of study? I mean, the symbol on the door means ‘Men’s Room,’ because it looks like a man. The one on the women’s room is similar, but it has a skirt, so that means ‘Women’s Room.’ A ‘Men at Work’ sign has a picture of a guy with a shovel on it. What am I missing?”

Marcie turned to Lucy. “Your turn,” she said.

Charlie looked down at his empty plate. “It’s OK, actually. Don’t bother. Maybe you’re right, Lucy, and I’m not stupid. But I’m not an intellectual. I just don’t have it in me.” He looked up and into his girlfriend’s deep, brown eyes, his own eyes misty. “Lucy, can you stand to spend your life with a simple man?”

“I don’t have to,” insisted Lucy. “You are not simple. You know who’s simple? People like that bully of yours who was ogling me, and his cheerleader girlfriend. _They_ are simple – and stupid. They’re pure id. They have no inner lives. They don’t think about things, they don’t think about what things mean. _They don’t worry if they’re simple._ It’s not even on their radar.”

Charlie whispered “you know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do,” agreed Lucy. “And you’re wrong. You think you’re dumb because you’re not good in school. But all that proves is that you’re not good at rote learning – but that’s only a measure of your skill at memorization and your ability to tolerate boredom. I bet if they put you in the Gifted Program, you’d be on the honor roll.”

“OK, now you’re just exaggerating for effect,” said Charlie.

“No, I’m not. You are smart, Charlie Brown. You are smarter than most of the over-achievers I go to class with. But you’re so convinced you’re not, you’re afraid to _try_ to think about complicated stuff, for fear that you’ll fail, _which you won’t_. You trust me more than anyone in the world, but you won’t believe me when I tell you this one thing. You drive me crazy, you fucking blockhead. I…”

Lucy stopped, realizing she now had the attention of the entire restaurant; that she had been pacing back and forth, shouting; that her friends were frozen in tableau – Marcie with her mouth open and finger up, waiting to get a word in edgewise, Charlie abashed but regarding her with a certain awe; he had never seen Lucy – logician, scientist in training – express herself so passionately.

Charlie thought it was magnificent. That _she_ was magnificent. How could he doubt her? Of course he was smart – Lucy said so. And she was so sure of it, the thought that he didn’t believe her made her lose her cool.

Magnificently.

Someone’s grandmother chastised her. “Language!” the old lady hissed from across the room.

“Sorry,” said Lucy, sitting down. Her friends relaxed.

Charlie shook his head, half grinning in that goofy way that melted Lucy’s heart. “OK,” he said, “I give up. You win. I’m smart.”

Lucy reflected his smile. Everything was alright.

He went on. “But you’re _smarter_. Teach me how to think. How to think like you.”

“You can only think like yourself, Charlie, but that’s more than enough. You’ll be amazed by your own thoughts when you figure out how to get at them. That, I can help you do.

“What do you say we drop psychology and move on to philosophy for a while? We’ll stick to the moderns – start out with Descartes and work our way up to Chomsky, who’s a great stepping off point for semiotics, actually.”

“Sounds like a lot of work,” said Charlie, as casually as he could while breaking out in a cold sweat.

“It will be,” said Lucy. But you’ll be working with me. We’ll be learning together.” She ran her fingers along his arm, raising goose bumps. “And there will be rewards for good classwork.”

“Ooh,” said Marcie, “can I sign up for your class, too?”


	9. Chapter 9

Sally Brown could easily be taken for a sociopath. At 15, she did not entirely recognize the full reality of anyone or anything that was not her or hers.

She was not malicious, simply oblivious. So effectively had her parents shielded their delicate flower from the harsh realities of the world that she was unaware of human suffering. She was not incapable of compassion. She simply hadn’t had the opportunity to develop the reflex.

She had no close friends, nor did she desire any. Satisfied being a loner, she spent most of her free time on her bicycle, exploring her domain. If she saw it, it belonged to her.

She chose this day, the first day of summer vacation, to expand her territory in the direction of the construction noises that had, for the past six months, replaced Hennepin Falls’ usual aural backdrop of bird song. Three new neighborhoods were being built three miles down the road from her hometown, 10 minutes from a railway station that could take passengers into Manhattan in under an hour.

The new development would have its own elementary school, but Coolidge Middle School and Hennepin High would each be taking on over a nearly one hundred new students.

It didn’t occur to Sally that neither institution had the capacity for nearly so many additional warm bodies. She just looked forward to meeting and cataloging them.

Most of her fellow students had noticed how tense their teachers seemed this year, how palpable a sense of impending doom had fallen over their institutions. But Sally was unaware of the pressures of adult responsibility, even as an observer, and could not conceive of any form of suffering greater than the disappointment of running out of Cocoa Puffs any given week. She was sure everything was, and always would be, just fine.

As she pedaled toward the new, nearly completed bedroom communities of Pine Ridge (located at least 75 miles from the nearest ridge, and devoid of pine trees), Pebble Creek (containing no natural running water) and Forest Glen (completely denuded of foliage to make room for townhomes with small, tidy lawns), Sally’s outrageously thick blonde hair flapped and twisted crazily in the wind. She was traveling at top speed, eager to see construction men at work, meet new kids, discover new playgrounds and parks, and add them all to her collection.

A copper placard on a large stone on the right side of the road, etched with the words “Pine Ridge” and flanked by two pine trees marked the entrance to the new community. Looking further down the road she saw identical split-level houses running to the vanishing point. It was as if someone had built an infinite number of houses on one side of the street and placed a long mirror in the center of the road. It made her go briefly cross-eyed, made her head hurt.

Spooked but determined, she proceeded into the neighborhood. She was relieved to see slight differences between the properties – door frames, shutters and garages were painted in subtly different colors, and the ubiquitous wood-paneled station wagons varied in manufacturer and model. And every ten houses or so, there was an intersection.

Perhaps four blocks in, three boys, the oldest about her age, were playing tackle football across two front yards, and making unfamiliar sounds it took her a few moments to recognize as speech.

“Hey,” said the oldest, noticing her presence, “who’s dis chick?”

“Jeez, Louise,” said the youngest, no more than 9 but possessing of a preternatural swagger, “how about some fuckin’ manners, ya mook?” He approached Sally, hand extended. “Hello, Miss, I’m Tony. The tall guy with no manners is Mickey, the quiet one is Louie.” Louie waved.

Sally had no idea what to make of the alien creature before her, but she shook his hand and said, brightly, “Sally Brown.” 

“So,” Tony replied, “new in town, Sally Brown?” He grinned at his own cleverness.

"We’re all new in town,” said Mickey. “It’s a new town. The town is new in town.”

“Actually, I’m from Hennepin Falls. I’m just here to look around.”

Sally stared at the brothers long enough to make them uncomfortable. “So, what are you guys?” she asked.

The boys exchanged glances. No one had ever asked them this before. Even Tony was taken aback.

“Whaddaya mean, _what_ are we? I don’t get it.”

“I’ve never seen people like you before. What’s your native language?”

The quiet one spoke up. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?”

“No,” replied Sally, sanguine in the face of mounting tension.

“We’re from Brooklyn,” explained Tony, patiently, “it’s part of New York City."

Sally laughed. “’New _Yawk_.’ You guys talk funny,” she opined.

“’You gize taak funnee,’” said Mickey. “Camman, let’s finish the game. This chick’s like slow or somethin’”

Tony chuckled at this. He dropped the gentleman act, told Sally “see ya ‘round,” and went back to the game.

Sally shrugged to herself. Some she didn’t understand some people, but she didn’t really feel the need to. She sped off, hoping to find some better subjects for her Kingdom.


	10. Chapter 10

If Sally found the new neighborhood unsettling, Miriam Finkelstein (Miri to her fellow travelers) found it gross. The monotony, the sterility – bad enough in their own right – were in fact symptoms of an insidious disease, an epidemic.

Every boring, split-level tract house in Pine Ridge was a monument to fear: fear of change, fear of the unpredictable.

Fear of niggers, spics and queers.

What was the point of living in a great city like New York if certain people didn’t know their place? If, in fact, certain people seemed to be taking over.

Few of Miri’s neighbors would admit they felt that way. They’d tell you they preferred the fresh air upstate, or that they were looking for a wholesome environment for their children. And they’d be telling the truth – they just wouldn’t admit what their definition of “wholesome” was.

Miri’s parents weren’t like that; they didn’t look down on anyone. They were tolerant to a fault. But the blackout riots the previous year had hit too close to their Flatbush home. Miriam had been through enough, they’d told themselves. It was time to abandon the city for greener pastures.

Miri had, perhaps naively, found the riots enthralling. The people were rising up. Sure, it wasn’t exactly an organized political demonstration like the ones she’d participated in; but when you’re being brutally oppressed, she reasoned, being polite will get you nowhere.

Miri did what she could to make her surroundings less anonymous. A peace sign adorned the Finkelstein’s front door; soul-catchers glittered in the windows; and a dozen sparkling pinwheels – some as large as 12 inches in diameter – spun slowly in planters meant for flowers, their movements accompanied by the sound of three sets of wooden wind chimes. As the blonde-headed girl approached, pedaling slowly and deliberately, Miri was adding hand-painted peace-symbols, rainbows and heart signs to the lawn.

The girl was examining her surroundings with a mixture of condescension and satisfaction that Miri found disconcerting and a bit creepy; but it piqued her curiosity.

The girl paused when she reached Miri’s home. She examined the scene silently, without acknowledging Miri’s presence.

Sally could not make sense of what she was seeing. She did not recognize the peace signs, and the woman decorating the lawn with them was dressed outlandishly – the simple peasant dress and round-lensed eyeglasses were normal enough, but then there were the multiple necklaces (some with pendants of that unfamiliar symbol); there were bracelets and anklets; and most unusually, there were sparkling objects woven into her wild brown hair.

Further, the woman’s features were like none she’d ever seen. Exotic. Prominent nose, eyes somehow suggesting a wisdom or sagacity beyond her years, olive skin.

Sally had never met a Jewish person before. She had questions.

“What’s all that stuff?” she demanded. Miri was taken aback by the girl’s intensity.

“Decorations for my lawn.” The woman's accent was like the boys', but somehow more refined.

Sally dismounted from her bicycle and let it fall to the ground. She approached the lawn and pointed at one of the signs. “What’s this?”

“It’s a peace symbol. It means that I believe there should be peace on Earth and no more wars.” 

“You mean like World War Two? But that was a good one, because we won, right?” Sally’s expression changed. She smiled sweetly at Miri.

Who was this kid? “What’s your name?” asked Miri.

“Sally.”

“Well, Sally, the thing is, millions of people died in World War Two. Not just soldiers, but people who weren’t involved in the fighting. Women and children. Millions were rounded up by the Nazis and sent to camps where they were starved and forced to work until they dropped dead, or they were shot, or died of diseases. They would take hundreds of children at a time, lock them in a room, and fill the room with poisonous gas so they choked and died. All because they were Jewish, like me. We were right to fight in that war, but that didn't make it any less horrible.”

Sally’s expression made Miri shudder inwardly. Her face was a blank. For what felt like a full minute, she didn’t blink.

Eventually, she determined what to do with the new information. She chose to ignore it.

“But that was a long time ago,” said Sally, as if there had been no pause in the conversation, “Everything’s OK now.”

 _Holy shit_ , thought Miri, _what are they teaching these kids? Does she really have no idea what’s going on in the world?_ ”

She motioned to Sally to sit down beside her on the lawn. The girl complied. “Sally, there are actually a lot of wars going on right now. The United States has fought two wars since World War Two, including one that ended just a few years ago. Almost sixty-thousand American soldiers died in that one, including my brother, Daniel. He was killed when I was about your age. Do you have any brothers or sisters, Sally?”

“I have an older brother,” Sally said.

“Imagine if they sent your brother to a place on the other side of the world to fight in a war, and he got shot or blown up. Can you imagine how that would feel? How your parents would feel?”

Sally whispered “I wanna go now,” but could not move.

“Every one of those sixty thousand soldiers like my brother had a family back home like mine. Every one of them had parents and siblings and cousins who screamed and cried and lost their minds with grief. And the grief never ends, Sally. Every day, somewhere in the world, people are being killed in the name of power and greed and religion and land and a hundred other excuses. It never ends.”

“No! Shut up! You’re lying! The world is fine – everything is fine. I’m not a war. No one I know is at war. You’re stupid! Leave me alone!”

Sally sobbed. Still, she could not move.

Miri took the girl in her arms and rocked her. “Sally, I was like you. I thought the world was perfect. Nothing bad had ever happened to me or anyone I knew.”

“Then my brother was killed, and I knew. 'Things fall apart. The center does not hold.' I went insane. It took years for me to recover. In fact I’m still a little crazy.”

Sally was calmer now, still weeping, but silently, her expression unfathomable.

“Sally, the world _is_ full of wonderful things. Art and music and nature and friends and family and adventure. But it’s also full of terrible, horrible things. I’m sorry you had to find out all at once, but if you ignore the terrible things, if you don’t know that people are suffering, you can’t begin to change it. Not just big things like war, but the everyday problems of people around you. Your friends.

“There’s nothing more important than compassion, Sally. It’s the only thing standing between humanity and universal horror.”

Sally found herself monstrously angry at the phrase “universal horror” for even existing linguistically.

“You have to practice compassion every day, Sally. You have to imagine how other people feel, how your actions will affect them. You’re not used to doing that, are you, Sally?”

 _How does she know all this?_ “No,” admitted Sally.

 _I’m going to make this girl my project_ , thought Miri, _my protégé._

“Sally, would you like to know what’s really going on in the world right now, and how we got here?”

“Yes. Yes I do. I want to know everything.” Sally’s sudden, almost religious fervor was striking to Miri. She hadn’t acquired a protégé, she’d attracted an acolyte.

“They should be teaching you this stuff in school, but obviously they’re not.” Miri smiled. “Sally, I am going to be your teacher.”

Sally’s mind spun out of control as she rode slowly home. She had been pedaling at her usual, furious rate, but she could not spare enough attention to her surroundings and had nearly landed in a deep ditch.

Besides, she wasn’t in a hurry. Her mind was full. She’d spent five minutes with that odd woman named Miri, and her life had been changed.

She was elated. She was angry. She was terrified. She was profoundly sad.

She missed her perfect world. But she preferred the truth.

She was going to tell everyone the truth from now on - whether they wanted to hear it or not. 


	11. Chapter 11

Sally met Miri in the park the next day. Seated at a picnic table, they reviewed passages from Miri’s pile of history texts, alternative newspapers, and essays by the likes of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn.

In between readings, Miri orated, telling stories, filling in the huge gaps in Sally’s historical education. Sally gazed across the table at her, transfixed by the drama, delighted to be learning so much of the truth that had been hidden from her, and appalled by almost everything she heard.

American history, the topic of her first lesson, was by itself a nightmare beyond her wildest imaginings. The genocide of the indigenous population; slavery; the oppression of women; witch hunts; the Civil War and the reconstruction; the denial of basic civil rights to “free” blacks; lynchings; the cruel treatment and exploitation of the waves European immigrants at the turn of the century – “Irish need not apply;” the appalling living conditions in the crowded ethnic ghettos; all manner of racism and bigotry; the greed and hubris of the Gilded Age which led inevitably to the Great Depression; bread lines; the dustbowl; the misery of migrant workers; the hope of FDR’s New Deal – opposed fanatically to that day by those who would see the United States descend into feudalism; the sexual repression and enforced conformity of the 50s; segregation; the violent resistance to the Civil Rights movement; the war in Vietnam; the assassinations of MLK, JFK, RFK and Malcom X; Kent State; the riots in New York that had sent Miri’s parents fleeing to Putnam County…

Sally had been assured every day of her life that the United States was the greatest country on earth. The idea was so deeply embedded in the American psyche as to be considered a tautology.

Certainly it was the most powerful. But the greatest? By what measure?

Coming to question the supremacy of American civilization was, for Sally, was like gaining x-ray vision. She could see past the surface of her idyllic little town and past its borders to the broader world; she could look into the idealized past and see it for what it was: a parade of atrocities, a tapestry of lies and deceptions into which were woven the genuinely magnificent achievements she _had_ been taught rightly to admire.

“Everyone has been lying to me, all my life,” lamented Sally, staring down at the brown wooden planks of the picnic table where her elbows rested. Her hands fidgeted. “Why would they do that? Lie to my face, over and over?”

Sally’s mood turned on a dime from sadness to rage. She stood up on her bench and bellowed “what the fuck is wrong with everybody?!” turning the heads of every park visitor in the vicinity. An old lady, nearby but unseen, hissed “language!”

Miri was taken aback. Sally didn’t exactly have great manners, but all through the afternoon, even when clearly upset by tales of one atrocity or another, she had not spoken a word stronger than “darn.”

In fact, Sally had never done so in her life. She’d heard all of the standard curse words, mostly on her way into the school building as she passed the wall where the tough kids in heavy metal t-shirts slouched, discussing drugs they hadn’t actually used, concerts they hadn’t attended, sex they hadn’t had, and how they’d rule they school next year when they moved up to Hennepin High.

But she had not once had the urge to use the words herself. Her mother kept a swear jar in the kitchen, and at 50 cents per utterance of “hell,” “dammit,” or “crap,” one’s allowance could evaporate very quickly if one were having a bad day.

Realizing she’d made a scene, Sally sat down slowly and did her best to avoid eye contact with anyone but Miri, who asked “you okay?”

Sally, her embarrassment quickly evaporating, chuckled. “Yeah. Actually, that felt pretty good.”

“Catharsis,” agreed Miri. “An appropriate ending to an afternoon of tragedy. Are you sure it wasn’t too much, too fast? There are a hundred ways I plan to blow your mind, but with good things, not the depths of human depravity.”

Sally wasn’t entirely sure what it meant to have one’s mind “blown,” though she suspected that her experiences of the past two days qualified.

“It _would_ be nice to learn about some positive things next time,” she admitted. “Could you teach me to be a hippie like you?”

Miri laughed. “How about tomorrow I tell you about my life, and how I became the ‘earth-goddess’ I am today.” She laughed again, this time, Sally sensed, at some private joke. “That may help you decide if we’re really on the same trip.”

Sally had no reply; it took her a moment to parse Miri’s usage of the word “trip.”

“But brace yourself – it gets a little R-rated at times. Think you can handle that?”

No, she didn’t. But she was intrigued. She deflected the warning. “Psssh! I think I can handle a little ‘sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, if that’s what you mean.” At least, she hoped she could.

“Far out,” said Miri. More hippie-speak, Sally assumed.

Miri had only begun to relax into what Sally assumed was her native dialect in the past half hour or so. Until then, she had maintained a professorial demeanor, carrying out an ongoing Socratic dialogue with perfect diction and intellectual rigor. At first her Brooklyn accent spoiled the illusion, but once Sally became used to Miri’s inflections, she had the vivid sense that she had skipped High School and gone directly to college.

Miri addressed her as an equal, a fellow adult; she asked Sally questions – profound questions about serious issues, and Sally found it within herself to answer them, or at least work her way toward understanding them.

Sally had always enjoyed school. She liked raising her hand and telling Mr. Souter that x equaled 2.5, or Mrs. Jenkins that the Battle of Hastings took place in the year 1066.

But such things were trivial. Under Miri’s guidance, she had, in just one afternoon, refuted Manifest Destiny, argued herself to a draw on the morality of the bombing of Hiroshima, and – in the span of one twenty minute conversation – become a radical feminist.

 _By the end of the week_ , Sally thought, _I’ll be a fully qualified hippie, subversive, radical lesbian feminist._

When discussing the civil rights movement, Miri had touched on the question of gay rights, and the role of lesbians in the feminist movement. Sally had never heard the words “gay” or “lesbian,” and was completely unfamiliar with the concept of homosexuality.

The subject made Sally obscurely uncomfortable, for it lent some confusion to what was a curiously null subject for her.

Sally didn’t have much sense of her sexuality one way or the other. She’d never had a crush on a boy, and, until this afternoon, hadn’t known girls were an option. She did not fantasize vividly when she masturbated; her desire for release was, most of the time, an itch to be scratched. She’d experienced no romantic longings.

But here was a notion that had a great romance to it. The purity of being a _lesbian_ feminist seemed something aspire to.

The idea of homosexuality was a bit frightening to Sally, if only for being so unexpected, so new. But Miri explained that she herself was a lesbian, and Sally thought everything about Miri was wonderful. So it had to alright. Even normal.

 _Whatever I am,_ thought Sally _, it’s alright. (But I hope I’m a lesbian.)_

But why didn’t she know? That seemed abnormal.

She’d give it some serious thought tonight.


	12. Chapter 12

Just as Sally’s daily routine that summer quickly became centered on her lessons with Miri, so Lucy and Charlie’s days centered on Marcie and her attic apartment. 

It was a clubhouse, a private spot away from the prying eyes of their provincial neighbors, and the perfect setting for discussions of intimate matters. 

“I never had a crush on Patty,” said Marcie. “I think I followed her around like that because I sensed that she was completely accepting. Kind of Zen, you know. You remember – she was like ‘oh, now I have a pet girl. Fine.’ Right?”

Marcie sat on one corner of the bed, watching Saturday morning cartoons with the sound off. Charlie and Lucy cuddled behind her, Charlie shirtless, Lucy in her bra and shorts. Occasionally, Marcie would look back at them, a warm happiness for her friends’ romance outweighing her jealousy.

They had been meeting at Marcie’s every day for a week now, and spent the majority of their time together in this configuration. At first, hands were held and clothes remained on. But in the last few days they had progressed to shirtless makeout sessions. Sometimes, Marcie would join the cuddle. As the three held and absently caressed each other, they would talk – long, wide-ranging conversations lasting hours.

At first the conversations had been intellectual, even abstract. Marcie’s perspective on life was alien; her neurons fired in ways that were mysterious and intriguing, making her fun, and a little unnerving, to talk to. Subjects collided and ricocheted and melded unpredictably. A comment by Charlie about the New York Mets triggered a ten-minute monologue by Marcie about figs. A casual mention of their childhood friend, Shermy, elicited the exclamation “I hate that bitch, Mary Sue!”

Today, however, they spoke of deeply personal matters. Lucy told Marcie of her journey to self-awareness – her realization that she’d been an angry, cruel child; her shame; her education; her understanding, and how it had led her to Charlie. 

Charlie spoke of Ophelia, the little red-haired girl who had been his first crush, and later the first girl he’d fantasized about. He’d finally met her in middle school, when they were in the same homeroom. She’d had no interest in him and, in retrospect, he didn’t like her. Blinded by hormones, he hadn’t registered that she was catty, shallow, and not very bright. “I can’t believe I wasted all those orgasms on her,” he concluded, a bit shocked to hear himself speak of so private a matter so bluntly.

And Marcie spoke of Patty. She continued: “But there was never an attraction there. Even when I hit puberty, nothing. She was just a Buddy. I never fantasized about her. I couldn’t. I don’t know if it was because of the nature of our relationship or that I’m just not into tomboys.”

“So who was your first girl crush?” asked Lucy.

Marcie grinned mischievously. “Gilda Radner.”

“Seriously?” asked Charlie. He liked her on Saturday Night Live, but didn’t consider her the least bit sexy.

“Yeah. She’s adorable, and so funny.”

“Any other celebrity crushes?” asked Lucy, amused.

“Julie Kavner. You know, from Rhoda. God, she’s cute.”

Lucy turned to face Marcie, a knowing gleam in her eye. “Aaaaah – so you have a thing for Jewish girls.”

Marcie grinned and held her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. (A little bit). She then stretched the digits as far apart as she could manage. She brought her other hand up and opened her arms to their widest point. (I once caught a fish thiiiiis big!) “You could say that,” she concurred.

“You know,” said Charlie, “I don’t think there’s a single Jewish family in Hennepin Falls. I think the nearest synagogue is in Brewster.”

“It’s okay,” chuckled Marcie. “I’m not holding out for a Jewish lesbian.”

“You know,” said Lucy, “there are a few kids at school who at least dress like hippies – I mean, toned down for the environment, but I think they’re sincere. Maybe we could ask some of them if they know any sisters. At least they won’t be shocked by the question, or narc on us.” 

Lucy was amused by her own use of counterculture slang, and more amused by the way it caused Charlie to tilt his head to one side like a confused dog – a habit he’d picked up from his pet beagle. At first it had been in jest, but it had long since been added to his natural repertoire of expressions.

Marcie crawled over to join Charlie and Lucy in their cuddle.

“I don’t know,” she said, “I think it’s hopeless. Maybe next year, when we leave this place; go somewhere closer to the city. Or maybe we can go straight to Manhattan. I’m sure you could get into Columbia or NYU. We could live in the Village. It’d be awesome.”

“All those things are very expensive,” said Lucy, sighing. “Even if I got a full scholarship, I don’t think we could live in the Village. My folks have all their money tied up in sending Linus to college. No way will they be able to help with rent or food.”

“And my family doesn’t have much money to begin with. Dad’s a manager at a cardboard box factory. We do alright, but I’m going to have to make my own way when I’m done with school.” 

“Oh, that’s okay,” said Marcie. “My parents are loaded. Dad’s an executive at Pan Am, and Mom’s family is rich. They’ll pay my way whatever I do.”

“Seriously?” asked Charlie.

“Yeah. They feel guilty because they’ve basically let me raise myself since middle school. They… they love me, but they don’t understand me. I don’t blame them – I’m hard to communicate with – you know, every day you’ve been over here, I’ve talked more than I have the entire year before. Literally – about twice as many words.

“They’d do anything for me; there’s just so many things they can’t.” Marcie was silent for a moment. Charlie noticed that her eyes were moist. “It’s sad, you know. They wanted a kid, but they got a creature from Planet X. I think I feel as guilty as they do.”

Lucy turned away from Charlie to kiss Marcie on the forehead. “It’s not your fault. Or theirs. Sometimes, life is just fucked up.”

Marcie sniffed. “I know. But it hurts. I mean, I’m fine. I was happy as a loner, and now I’m happy being with you guys all the time. I just… I wish it were different. For them.”

Charlie leaned over Lucy to stroke Marcie’s hair and scritch her head. Marcie purred. He wished he had something useful to add to conversation, but at least he could comfort his friend.

“Anyway,” said Marcie, her mood lifting, “just being cynical, yeah – they’ll pay my way. Food, rent, anything reasonable. And if this week has proved anything, it’s that we could live comfortably in an efficiency. I mean, Charlie and I would have to have jobs – they’re not going to support all three of us. But it’s a good foundation. Rent won’t be an issue.”

“Well,” said Lucy, “let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I don’t know for certain I’ll get a full scholarship anywhere, much less Columbia or NYU.”

They were all silent for a moment, pondering their futures. Marcie imagined an evening at a lesbian bar; so many women, so little time. Charlie wondered what he’d do for a living while Lucy studied.

Lucy had a more immediate matter on her mind.

She told Charlie “Excuse us for a minute. Girl talk.” Charlie shrugged and turned to lie on his side, facing away from them. He did his best not to try to eavesdrop as Lucy whispered in Marcie’s ear. In the end, he couldn’t help it, but he couldn’t make out anything that was said.

After a few moments, he heard Marcy declare “Well, guys, I think I need a little private time. I’m gonna go take a walk in the park.”

“Have a good time,” said Lucy. And with that, Marcie was out the door, looking, Charlie thought, unusually pleased with herself. 

“Why,” asked Charlie, “do I get the feeling that she didn’t need to take that walk until you asked her to?”

Lucy laughed. “And you think you’re not smart.” She winked at him, and removed her bra. She laughed again when she saw the expression on his face. But she misread the situation. 

Charlie’s was frozen. He felt as if his sudden erection had spread throughout his entire body. He couldn’t move. He was terrified, he realized, but grinning like a maniac.

Please help me.

“Wait – are you okay?” Lucy became alarmed. “What’s wrong?” She stroked Charlie’s cheek. “Talk to me.”

“I… I don’t know… Is this it? Are we going to do it? Is that why you sent Marcie out?”

“Well, we can’t actually have ‘do it,’ we don’t’ have any protection. But everything else, yes. I mean, if you want to. If you’re ready.”

“Oh, I’m ready,” said Charlie; but his voice wavered. “But I may need a horse tranquilizer before I can relax enough.” He laughed nervously.

“Honey, it’s not a big deal. Really. It’s just like making out – just more so, right?”  
Charlie thought about this. “But what if I’m not good at it?”

Lucy grinned. “Well, then, we’ll just have to practice. A lot.”

“But what if…?”

Lucy cut him off. “Shhh. How about I go first? You can just lie there and look at me adoringly while I help you get rid of all that tension.”

Despite himself, Charlie relaxed. Lucy was in control. It was going to be fine. 

It was better than fine.


	13. Chapter 13

It was not the best day for a walk in the park – overcast, humid, over 90 degrees. Stultifying. Marcie was drenched with sweat within five minutes. Still, she was happy that her friends were busy working up their own sweat on her once lonely bed. She despaired of her own chances of finding a partner, but there was a certain pleasure in living vicariously through Lucy and Charlie. And picturing Lucy naked.

Realizing that she could not possibly bear the conditions outdoors for long enough to give her friends sufficient private time, she headed for the library.

The Hennepin Falls Public Library was a modest affair, an unadorned brick building which, like the town’s two public schools, stood out for its stark Bauhaus functionality among the quaint, late 19th century architecture that surrounded it.

Marcie was usually sensitive to that sort of thing, but today she sought only the powerful air conditioning the library ran during the summer. If anything, they kept it too cold, but that was just what she needed.

She positively squelched into a chair near the entrance and spent several minutes recovering from her short but uncomfortable trek. All things being equal, she thought, she wouldn’t trade that relief for any pleasure Lucy and Charlie were experiencing at the moment. All things were not, of course, equal (what the hell did that phrase even mean, she wondered), but that was of no moment.

When she was capable of movement again, she set off in search of a copy of Dangerous Visions, a compilation of science fiction shorts that she’d heard was edgy, even devastating. She could stand to have her mind blown, she thought, and Dangerous Visions sounded like just the ticket. Whether a small library in a provincial town would have the book in its collection – that was another, well, story; still, she had to do something to fill the time.

As she approached the science fiction section, she noticed a familiar shock of blond hair. It had to be Charlie’s sister. She stage-whispered “Sally!” in the girl’s direction.

Sally turned, and smiled warmly at her old acquaintance. “Marcie!”

Marcie noticed that she was carrying a small stack of books about the war in Vietnam. Sally gestured with her head for Marcie to follow her to a nearby table where a woman with wild, crazily adorned hair sat with her face buried in a volume on the same subject.

As they sat, Sally said… something. She was probably introducing Marcie to her companion, but Marcie heard none of it. Sally’s friend looked up from her book, and Marcie’s heart skipped a beat.

The woman was gorgeous. Strongly ethnic Jewish features, slim but healthy; radiant. In addition to the trinkets woven into her hair, she wore a tangle of necklaces. Some dipped beneath the neckline of her granny dress, but a few held visible pendants – a peace symbol, a heart, a yin and yang, and one she couldn’t identify.

Marcie knew she was staring, but could not stop. For an embarrassingly long time.

“Um, hello? Miri? Sally here. What’s going on?”

What was going on was that Miri had been staring at Marcie as well. Sally’s complaint brought them both back to reality.

“Oh, uh, sorry,” said Miri. “I kind of spaced out there for a minute. You were introducing me to your friend.”

Sally sighed, quite put upon. She re-introduced them as curtly as possible. “Miri, Marcie. Marcie, Miri. Can we get back to what we were doing?”

“Actually,” said Miri, glancing conspiratorially at Marcie, “I think we’re done for today. There’s no AC in my car, and the trip really tired me out. In fact, why don’t we take a day or two off until the heat breaks?”

Sally eyed Miri suspiciously, then Marcie. She knew what was going on; she couldn’t decide whether it titillated her or grossed her out. In the end, she chose to ignore the matter entirely.

“Okay,” she said. “I could use a break, myself. Maybe we can get off of American History for a while. It’s too depressing.”

“You said it,” agreed Miri. “How about we change pace entirely, and talk human sexuality.” A few nearby heads turned. Miri continued, more quietly. “You know, go over some of those things you asked about before.”

“Sure,” said Sally. “Fine. Why don’t I come over to your place on Monday”

“Perfect.”

Sally put her pile of books down on a nearby table and strode quickly out.

 _She’s on to us, and she’s not happy_ , thought Miri. _Fuck it. She’s old enough to deal with this kind of thing. Let her work it out_.

Thoughts of her protégé faded, and she returned her attention to her new acquaintance. “So. Marcie.” She extended her hand.

“Miri,” Marcie replied, extending her own. They did not shake, but rather held hands tenderly for a long moment. Marcie thought Miri’s was the most beautiful hand she’d ever seen.

“It’s… nice,” stammered Marcie, “…really nice to meet you. Charlie said that – Charlie’s Sally’s brother – said that she’d found a mentor, but he never mentioned how…” how gorgeous she was “that is, he doesn’t know what you’re teaching her. He just said that she’s gotten all socially conscious recently, which is great, I think. There’s so much to be aware of that doesn’t seem to make its way into the collective consciousness of this little town. It’s pretty backward, in a lot of ways. I mean Charlie and Lucy – that’s his girlfriend, Lucy – have been ready to start having sex for ages now, but if one of them was seen buying condoms, the whole town would know about it by the end of the day and they’d be grounded and I’m still holding your hand and I can’t stop talking and I don’t know why please help me, because...”

Miri shifted her grip on Marcie’s hand, leaned in, and kissed it tenderly.

This stopped Marcie’s monologue cold. Her jaw dropped. Her eyes widened comically, her pupils dilated. She look so much like a character from a Japanese animated cartoon that Miri couldn’t help but laugh.

“What’s wrong,” she whispered. “You act like you’ve never met another lesbian before.”

Marcie smiled – so widely that she thought her head would break in half. Then Miri watched, stunned, as the girl broke down sobbing.

She ran to the other side of the table to take Marcie in her arms and comfort her. Aware that they were making a scene, and doing so at an unacceptable volume for the inside of a library, she helped Marcie to her feet and guided her out the door.

It was like stepping into a sauna. The sudden, sweltering discomfort was enough to stir Marcie from her catharsis. “I’m sorry,” she gasped, as they sat on a bench on a quiet side street. “But I actually haven’t.”

Miri was confused. “Haven’t what?”

Marcie gazed into Miri’s eyes – her beautiful, sparkling eyes – her face dripping with tears and sweat, and whispered “I’ve never met another lesbian. Ever.”

Miri was aghast. “What, seriously? That’s… you poor thing, you must be so lonely.”

Marcie nodded. “By the way,” she asked, wiping her face on her sleeve, “how did you know I was queer?”

Miri laughed warmly – the most beautiful sound Marcie had ever heard. “I’ve been stared at lustfully before, but that was… that almost scared me.”

Marcie hung her head, terrified that she’d scared the _beautifulkindsexy_ woman off. “Sorry.” She wept again, silently.

Miri touched Marcie’s chin and lifted her head. “Don’t be. The feeling’s mutual.”

Marcie laughed, really more of a gasp. “Oh thank fucking God. It would’ve been just my luck if I finally met another lesbian and she wasn’t into me.” Miri joined her in her laughter.

“So. Wanna come back to my place?” asked Marcie. “I’m not propositioning you, we’ve just gotta get out of this heat.”

It was the best offer Miri had had all day. “Lead the way.”

They crossed the park hand in hand. As Marcie’s home came into view, she stopped in her tracks. “Oh, shit,” she hissed, “it’s too soon.”

“Too soon for what?”

“I told Charlie and Lucy I’d give them some private time. It’s only been…” She checked her watch, “twenty five minutes. I wanted to give them at least an hour.”

“Well,” said Miri, “you can do a lot in twenty five minutes. Why don’t you take a listen at the door, and if the room ain’t a-rockin’, we can go a-knockin’.”

Marcie had serious doubts about this strategy. She hated the thought of interrupting her friends’ lovemaking. In the end, she rationalized – under the circumstances, they’d just be happy for her.

Miri waited at the bottom of the stairs while Marcie made her way up. She didn’t need to put her ear to the door to hear what was clearly Lucy having a powerful orgasm. She turned and gestured to Miri with her index finger. _Just a minute_.

A moment later, peering through the door’s inset window at an angle, Marcie could just barely see Lucy and Charlie flopping down beside each other, smiling gloriously. She counted 30 seconds, then opened the door just a crack.

“Guys? I’m really sorry to interrupt, but can I come in?”

She heard low chuckling. Lucy replied “Sure. It’s alright.”

“Everything,” added Charlie, “is alright. Everything in the universe.”

Marcie gestured again to Miri: an OK sign and another “ _just a minute._ ”

Charlie had covered himself up to his navel with one of Marcie’s quilts. Lucy, on the other hand, had made no effort to cover up at all. She was naked, sitting zazen in the middle of the bed, as content as Marcie had ever seen another human being. She soaked in her friend’s radiant happiness, and every detail of her lovely body.

She also had a moment of insecurity – what if Miri saw Lucy like this? How could she compete?

_No. ”The feeling’s mutual,” Miri had said._

“Um. Guys? I, uh, have a visitor. You may want to cover up. I can’t wait for you to meet her. She’s so awesome! She’s… beautiful, and smart and…” Lucy was smiling benevolently at her. Charlie’s head was tilted. “…oh, God, she’s gay, and we’re totally into each other! I can’t believe it. I found her! I…” Marcie stopped to catch her breath. “I should let her know it’s okay to come up.”

Marcie poked her head out the door and gestured to Miri to come up. Miri exhaled, looking upward. _Whew. About damn time. I’m up to medium rare._

Marcie closed the door behind Miri and embraced her. Marcie had cooled off in the air-conditioned room, but Miri was still slick with sweat, her dress sticking to her. Her brain was getting confusing signals from her eyes - there was something not quite right about the room. She reviewed the day, noted that she hadn't ingested anything hallucinogenic, and filed the matter away for later consideration.

“Miri,” said Marcie, after their long embrace, “this is Charlie…” Charlie nodded, "and this is Lucy.”

Lucy now lay on her stomach, elbows forward, propping up her head with her hands. “Hi there,” she said.

“Charlie and Lucy, this is Miri.”

Miri, to Marcie’s surprise, lay down on one side of the bed, leaving enough space between herself and Lucy for Marcie to occupy. She patted the mattress. “Come on, join us.”

Marcie hesitated. It wasn’t just that the situation was sexually charged and Charlie and Lucy were right there; she was also afraid of crowds, and four people on one bed…

Miri removed her sweat-soaked dress. “Ah, that’s better.” Miri did not believe in wearing bras.

Marcie clambered onto the bed, trying not to stare at Miri’s small, lovely breasts. She lay on her right side, to face Miri, who faced her, lying on her left side. Her heart thundering in her chest, Marcie leaned in to receive her first kiss.

“We should probably go,” said Lucy, gathering her clothes.

“Are you sure?” asked Miri. “The more the merrier.”

Marcie froze. On the one hand, the prospect of having Charlie and Lucy (especially Lucy) present for – even involved in – her sex life made her tingly all over. On the other, it was her _first time_. It just wasn’t the occasion for sex by committee.

Lucy read her mind. “Yeah. We don’t want to be a third and fourth wheel.”

Charlie was halfway to the door. “You guys have fun. We’ll go get some fries.”

Lucy added “Give one of us a call in a day or two, when you’re thoroughly debauched and need a break.”

Heat and humidity poured in as Charlie opened the door. “Remember,” he said, “pace yourselves, and don’t forget to eat and hydrate yourselves once in a while.”

“Don’t worry,” said Miri, never taking her eyes off Marcie, “I’ll take good care of her.”


	14. Chapter 14

Sally’s parents were entirely more reasonable than Lucy’s. While not a liberal by by any means, Allan Brown was a union man – a union leader, in fact, at his cardboard box plant, and well enough educated to understand the connection between the lefty counterculture that his daughter was currently enchanted with and the leftist roots of the labor movement.

He and his wife Carol doted on Sally; so when the girl began asking for tie-dyed shirts and “earth-mother” dresses and peace-symbol necklaces, they obliged. Sally’s sudden interest in current affairs – and that awful business in Vietnam from which they’d spent a decade shielding her – was disconcerting.

But they were reasonable people. One can only be overprotective for so long, and if their daughter’s reaction to learning about the war was to make a few questionable fashion choices, well, it could be worse.

Carol Brown was more concerned that Sally was visibly fidgeting at church, and clearly rankled along passages of Reverend Parnell's sermons. The man wasn’t as obsessed with the fire and brimstone of the Old Testament as Father MacDougal at Lucy’s church – Episcopalians were generally more laid back about such things – but the reverend spent enough time bemoaning the gay rights movement, the sexual revolution, and the five-borough Sodom and Gomorrah on the Hudson, that Sally would work up a sweat just sighing and rolling her eyes.

About Miri, the Browns only knew that Miss Finkelstein lived in that new housing development up the road and would be joining the staff of Sally’s school in the fall as the new social studies teacher; Miss Finkelstein met Sally when the girl was exploring the new neighborhood, and was so impressed with her potential that she offered to spend time giving her lessons over the summer.

Sally didn’t like to lie to her parents, but other than the part about Miri teaching at the middle school, the story was basically true. At least, it was close enough for rock ‘n’ roll, as Miri liked to say.

Sally reviewed the situation in her mind as she rode her bike through Hennepin Falls. She didn’t like the Marcie angle. They were probably at Marcie’s place lezzing out right now.

Nothing wrong with that, of course, she thought. As an aspiring radical lesbian feminist herself, she wanted to feel nothing but joy for her mentor. And for Marcie – Sally didn’t know her very well, but she always seemed nice enough, if a little weird.

But having a girlfriend would surely cut into Miri’s time with Sally, time Sally guarded with great jealousy.

Then there was the vaguely incestuous nature of the whole affair. Her brother spent most of his time at Marcie’s, presumably making out – or more – with Lucy. Sally didn’t know how Marcie fit into that arrangement, and probably didn’t want to know. Regardless, any day now, Charlie would find out that her tutor, Miss Finkelstein, was Miri, her mentor in the ways of being a hippie goddess, socialist, free thinker, and radical lesbian feminist.

Charlie was a nice guy, but a complete square. Could he handle having Miri around? Would she freak him out? Would the fact that Sally was remaking herself in Miri’s image freak him out even further? Would he narc on her – or had the pleasures afforded him (she assumed) by privacy with Lucy loosened him up?

What exactly was going on in Marcie’s apartment?

 

Marcie pretended to sleep. It was plausible enough – Miri had just fulfilled her every sexual fantasy and then some; any reasonable person would have been out cold after a workout like that. In fact, that first, cataclysmic orgasm would have been enough for most people; but it had been followed by so many more…

Still, she kept her eyes open just wide enough to watch Miri as she floated, naked, around the apartment, humming, and carefully examining Marcie’s décor, trying to make sense of it.

 _This kid is insane_ , she thought, peering at a hanging space station full of Lego minifigs Marcie and made from used pudding cups and papier-mâché which incorporated only strips of newspaper clippings about the moon landings.

A space capsule made of a Dixie cup and tin foil orbited it slowly, suspended and propelled by a Rube Goldberg-esque system of wires, pulleys, and the workings from an inexpensive desk clock.

If one looked through the exact center of the model, a poster for 2001: A Space Odyssey was visible on the opposite wall, with a minifig in the foreground, in as close an approximation as possible to a fetal position, lining up exactly with the space child on the poster.

_Gloriously, magnificently insane._

Miri was in love. She wanted Marcie in her life. She wanted to nurture her, protect her, comfort her, and fuck her brains out.

 _One out of four so far_ , she noted to herself.

 

Meanwhile, Lucy and Charlie shared what was surely the most erotic pile of cheese fries ever consumed. Lucy discovered over a dozen suggestive ways to consume the potato slices, several incorporating the dripping cheese. Charlie, face flushed throughout the entire meal, managed just once to play along, holding two fries in V formation and licking the apex to suggest cunnilingus; but he nearly fainted dead away when a diner at the next table caught him at it.

Lucy was getting noticed as well, but was entirely sanguine about it. In fact, she seemed to get some sort of enjoyment out of torturing Charlie in this way. It wasn’t sadism, she just wanted to see him loosen up in public as much as he’d loosened up in bed.

Lucy had surprised herself that afternoon. She’d always assumed that performing fellatio would be highly uncomfortable, possibly nauseating. Charlie would never have asked it of her, but she did want him to experience it.

It was actually no big deal. Not exactly fun in and of itself – a bit of a strain on the neck, and semen tasted horrible; she couldn’t help gagging – but she loved making Charlie feel good. She didn't mind adding the act to her repertoire.

For his part, Charlie returned the favor. For Lucy, it was a revelation: not only was getting “eaten out” every bit as divine as she had been led to believe, but Charlie, who had never been able to discern in himself a true talent or calling, had clearly found his.

Granted, it wasn’t something he could put on his resume; and Lucy suspected it would be many decades before oral sex became an Olympic event. But it did bode well for their future sex lives. They excelled at making each other come.

Fries gone, another hunger sated, Lucy and Charlie stared blissfully at each other across the table, lost in memories of their lovemaking.

So entirely had they tuned out the noise and bustle of the diner in favor of the depths of each other’s eyes that when Sally greeted them with a chipper “hi!” they nearly fell out of their seats. Charlie’s arm jerked wildly and sent a large plastic cup half-full of soda flying onto the next table over, where, as if by magic, it caught most of the separately airborne liquid. Then, in accordance with actual physics, the force of the liquid hitting the inside of the glass sent it tumbling with such momentum that the spill landed mostly on the _next_ table.

The spectacle was greeted with scattered applause.

Sally ignored the incident and continued “so what have you guys been up to?” From her tone, she clearly had some idea of the answer.

Charlie was still in shock, but Lucy, entertained but unfazed by the incident, replied “oh, you know, the usual. Hanging out at Marcie’s, mostly.”

“So I guess you’ve met my teacher, then?” There was a certain menace in Sally’s voice.

“Miss Finkelstein? No. When would we have met her?” asked Charlie, at sea.

“About an hour ago. She's Marcie’s new girlfriend.”

Lucy was stunned and delighted. “Miri is Ms. Finkelstein? Oh that’s just perfect.” She looked Sally up and down, noting her outfit. “And it does explain a lot. Come on, sit with us.” Charlie made room for Sally to slide into the booth beside him.

“So,” asked Sally, again with an aggressive undertone, “what do you think of her?”

“We barely exchanged two words,” said Lucy. “We cleared out as fast as we could, to let nature take its course.”

“Well, she _is_ pretty amazing,” said Sally, head down, dejected.

“So what's wrong?”

“I don't know. I guess... I guess I wanted her all to myself.”

“Sally,” said Lucy, “think of how much time she's spent with you just this week. She obviously cares about you a lot. She won't abandon you. Plus you'll have her for social studies when school starts.”

Sally rolled her eyes. “She's not really a school teacher. She's just someone who volunteered to be my guru.” She stared daggers at Charlie. “Don't tell mom and dad.”

“Obviously,” Charlie replied.

“No, seriously. Don't. Tell. Them. Or you will wake up the next morning with nothing down there for Lucy to play with. Get it?”

Charlie was taken aback. Sally could be a hellion, but he'd never heard her say anything remotely sexual. “Got it.”

“Hey,” chuckled Lucy, “don't damage my property. I'll have to sue.”

Sally was highly amused by the idea of her brother's privates being Lucy's property.

“So what do you guys... do up there?”

“Jesus,” said Charlie. “We're not telling you that. It's private. And do you really want to hear about your brother's sex life?”

“Frankly, I'm too amazed that you're having one to be grossed out by it.”

Charlie considered a biting reply, but settled on an honest one. “Actually, I'm pretty amazed, myself.”

To Charlie's horror, Lucy answered Sally's question directly. “Well, since we don't have condoms, we couldn't have intercourse, so we mostly did oral stuff. It was great.”

Charlie buried his face in his hand. Sally laughed nervously, a high-pitched gasp.

“Well, you asked,” said Lucy.

“I didn't think you were really going to answer! Dammit, now I've got the image of you going down on my brother stuck in my head. Do you still offer psychiatric advice? I'm going to need at least 5 years of therapy now.”

 

Marcie gave up pretending to sleep, and Miri gave up pretending she didn't know Marcie was awake and watching her. She slunk back to the bed across which her lover was splayed almost randomly.

Marcie had always needed to be in just the right pose – almost a fetal position – to sleep or rest; her body was very demanding that way. But Miri had loosened her up at the neurological level somehow. Marcie was completely relaxed with her head just below the pillow on the right side of the bed, and her torso and legs forming a horizontal arch, her calves and feet resting on the left-hand pillow. Miri's cat Muffin would have been impressed.

Miri lay down next to Marcie, kissed her passionately, and worked her hands across Marcie's body, kneading her flesh.

Their previous time, Marcie had let Miri do all the work. This time would be different. She grabbed Miri's arms and flipped to the side until she was on top of Miri, straddling her.

Miri was delighted. “That's it. You take the lead. _You_ make _me_ scream.” Previously Miri had focused giving Marcie the most spectacular deflowering possible, and hadn't tended to her own pleasure. She was happy to do it, but it had left her rather worked up and – through no fault of Marcie's – frustrated.

But that was just fine. The pump was primed, and it wouldn't take much for her inexperienced partner to elicit those screams from her. She was halfway there now, with Marcie brushing her inner thighs with her fingertips. A few inches further in...

The suddenness of Miri's orgasm stunned her so that she froze for a moment, before shaking and moaning in ecstasy. Was it just that she had deferred her own release for so long, or did this kid have the magic touch?

Either way, it was good for Marcie's self-confidence. “Aww, come on, that was too easy.”

“Yeah?” gasped Miri, “Well, who told you you could stop?”

Marcie grinned and got back to work. _Now_ that, thought Miri, _is how you top from the bottom._

Clearly, Marcie was going to be as apt a pupil as Sally. The trick was going to be keeping them both happy without completely exhausting herself.

She'd find a way, or die trying.

 


	15. Chapter 15

The matter was under intense litigation on several fronts.

Parklawn Properties, the developers behind Peaceful Acres – the three new neighborhoods outside Hennepin Falls – had, as promised, substantially financed the construction of a new elementary school to accommodate the younger children of the new residents.

However, they had also agreed to finance extensions to Hennepin Falls' middle and high schools to accommodate an influx of 254 new teenagers. But not a cent of the $225,000 they had promised the Putnam County School System had materialized over the year and a half the development had been under construction. And with every unit sold as of April, 1978, Parklawn Properties – in actuality a holding company within a holding company within a verbal agreement – promptly dematerialized, leaving the development's housing association the only incorporated entity in any way, well, associated, with the 325-home tract.

This also left Betsy Ross Middle School and Louis Hennepin High School with no new classrooms to house 120 and 134 new students respectively.

So while Hennepin Falls' youngsters passed an idyllic summer in the time-honored manner (and a handful in hedonistic bliss in one attic apartment), the local school board, the Putnam County government, and the New York State Department of Education went collectively insane.

The school board launched a campaign to collect 254 donated chairs of any kind (standard public school desk-chairs were beyond their meager budget). As for how they would cram those seats into already crowded classrooms, they had decided, after several hours of heated debate, to wing it.

The daily schedules would have to be completely rearranged. With no additional teachers, much less classrooms for them to occupy, classes would have to be considerably shortened to allow for three additional class periods per day. Teachers spent hundreds of hours reviewing their normal curriculum and paring it down to a bare minimum. Margaret Sumner (AP English) and Dolores Gentry (French) got particularly behind in this pursuit due to nervous breakdowns.

At the county and state levels, lawyers searched frantically for some entity or individual to sue into oblivion, and some source of funding to replace the $225,000 Parklawn Properties had reneged on before vanishing into thin air.

Meanwhile, just to make things interesting, the Peaceful Acres Housing Association was suing New York State, Putnam County, and Hennepin Falls for breach of whatever they could think of, and a number of individual Peaceful Acres residents were suing all of the above for failure to not make their lives miserable (good lawyers being something of a scarce commodity in the immediate area).

Further, unbeknownst to all of these embattled litigators, educators, and entrepreneurs, one self-styled radical was planning an act of dissent she was sure would bring the whole system crashing down on the first day of school.

 


	16. Chapter 16

The day after she met them, Miri did Lucy and Charlie a great favor.

She purchased condoms for them from the drug store a mile down the road from Peaceful Acres – quite possibly enough to get them through the rest of the summer.

As she placed her haul of approximately 30 boxes on the counter, the matronly lady at the cash register blanched.

“Big weekend coming up,” Miri explained.

The poor woman's hands shook as she rung up and bagged the purchase.

 

* * *

 

Charlie and Lucy lost what was left of their virginities that afternoon.

“So this is really it. We're doing this,” said Charlie, surprised, after the previous day's festivities, to be nervous to the point of shaking.

Lucy kissed his forehead. “If you want to.” She removed his shirt, and kissed her way down his chest to his belly.

“Of... of course I do. I-I just wish we'd had more time yesterday. To get used to it. You know, practice.”

Lucy smiled and shook her head gently. She removed her own shirt. “Not necessary. It's one of your deepest instincts. Just don't even think about it.”

Charlie was unconvinced.

“OK, c'mere,” said Lucy, sitting cross-legged. She gestured to Charlie to do the same. They leaned in to touch foreheads.

“Listen – this is no big deal. Truly. And there's no pressure. We've got enough birth control in that bag there for over a hundred do-overs if we don't get the hang of it the first time.” She felt Charlie calming down. She stroked his cheek. “Don't think of it like it's some huge event. Let's just get naked and do what comes naturally.”

Lucy paused. She let time go by, passively. Charlie was becoming confused. Finally he asked “um, what's happening?”

“Undress me. I undressed us both yesterday. It's your turn.”

Charlie tilted his head. Lucy laughed. He reached out hesitantly for her bra strap, then withdrew his hand.

“So it's okay if I...”

“Yes, you blockhead. I just told you to.” Lucy's giggles were infectious. Charlie relaxed again. He reached out with both hand and pulled down both straps. He reached around to undo the clasps in back, but Lucy said “just lift it up.”

His hands shook again, but this time with desire. That, too, was infectious. Lucy ceased giggling and began to breathe deeply. She helped Charlie remove the bra – he was unsure just how hard to tug up at it.

“Mmmm... feel them.”

“Huh?”

Good grief. “My breasts. I want your hands all over them.” Charlie had been too shy to do much groping the previous day. He hadn't been to shy to eat her out like a champ; Lucy was fairly sure he felt that the latter was purely for her benefit, while the tactile pleasure of feeling her up was all his, and he didn't want to be a greedy lover.

She really wanted him to take the lead this time, but perhaps he could work up to it. For the moment, well, he was good at following orders. He kept track of what gave her the most pleasure, and focused on those moves, but with enough presence of mind to incorporate some variations. He was going to be very good at this before long.

Lucy lay back, again waiting for Charlie to make the next move.

This time he did. He unzipped her jeans and pulled them off, along with her panties.

Charlie considered, for a moment, lunging for his area of highest competence.

_No. Save that for afterward, in case I come too soon or something,_ he thought _._

He stepped off the bed, removed the rest of his own clothing, then lay down next to her on his side, facing her. She turned to face him.

“So, um, how do you want to do this?” he asked.

Lucy had already thought this through. “Me on top. That will give me more control over my own pleasure, I think. You know, how the parts interact”

“Heh. I thought you wanted me to take the lead,” said Charlie.

“I wanted you to take the _initiative_. You're so damned shy. Can't you get it through your skull that I want you? Bad?”

“I'm trying,” Charlie said.

“I know,” said Lucy. She pushed him onto his back, and reached over to the side table to retrieve a box of condoms. In that moment, she was above him, straddling him. Her inner thigh brushed his erection, and so great was his arousal that he feared that he'd come before the condom was all the way on.

As Lucy opened the box and – more nervous than she was going to let Charlie know – struggled to tear one condom from its five brothers along the perforated edge, Charlie forced himself to calm down. _No big deal, no big deal, no big deal..._

Lucy tore open the packet and removed the contents. The thing felt odd. She tried to figure out what it reminded her of before deciding that it was unlike anything she'd touched before. She hoped that was a portent of the object's strong juju. The last thing she needed was to get pregnant.

Rather than hand the condom off to Charlie, she put it on him herself, frankly curious about how the thing would feel unrolling. Again, it had no precedent for her.

Charlie inhaled, a hiss; Lucy touching him there was delightful, but the condom was cold. He was actually glad of this; it pulled him a step further back from the brink.

“Ready?” said Lucy. She didn't give him time to reply, attempting to immediately lower herself onto him.

It didn't quite work.

Rather than entering her vagina, Charlie's erection collided with it at a bad angle. Lucy gasped, and had the urge to laugh, but Charlie's grunt of pain was completely serious.

“Oh shit! Oh, shit! I'm so sorry! Are you all right?”

Charlie took several deep breaths, his face frozen in a wince. “Yeah,” he panted, finally, “but I think I need a time out.”

Lucy lay back down next to Charlie, facing him. When she was sure he was alright, she let herself laugh. “I'm sorry. I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing at myself. That was a real boner move. So to speak.” She laughed harder at her unintentional joke.

Charlie managed to laugh as well. “Just for that, you should kiss it and make it better.”

“I will, but let's wait until it stops hurting,” said Lucy.

Lucy gestured to Charlie to roll over on his side, facing away from her. She sidled up to spoon with him.

“Man, are we a couple of amateurs or what?” asked Lucy.

“What do you mean 'we', white girl? You're the one who almost broke my dick.”

Lucy laughed. “Yeah, and you're the one who didn't know whether to take my bra off.” She stroked his belly, working her way toward his groin.

“You know,” said Charlie, in his philosophical tone, “I've imagined this day a thousand times. This is not how it went.”

Lucy hand reached its target to find Charlie was already erect.

“Wanna try again,” she asked.

“Hmm. Let me think...” Charlie's voice trailed off. He was silent for several seconds before Lucy, somewhere between amused and perturbed asked, “Well?”

“Yeah,” said Charlie, feigning aloof casualness, “why not? We're here, we're naked. Might as well.”

They returned to their previous position. Lucy pulled another condom from the box and put it on him. She was getting used to the feel of the things.

“Are you sure,” asked Charlie, “that you want to try it this way again. Maybe it's too advanced.”

“Don't worry,” replied Lucy. “I've got it this time.”

With that, she used her hand to guide him inside her.

Charlie gasped; Lucy purred. She had expected a small pain, but there was none.

As they moved in their instinctive rhythms, a sort of peace fell over each of them. Each reached an understanding.

For Lucy, always at one step remove from herself – watching, analyzing, criticizing – there was a sense of release from that expression of her ego. It was still there, enough to note its own leave-taking, but that was its last observation.

All thought did not disappear; she was not reduced to animal instinct, to pure id. That was the stuff of overwrought fantasy. But her mind was not now imagining how she – a voluptuous girl in a society obsessed with thinness, a woman with strong, wide features in a culture that valued daintiness – might appear to an outside observer, someone who might think “well, isn't she lucky to find a man actually willing to fuck her.”

The feeling would return, of course. But it would not be as strong as it once was. The sweetest, kindest, most adorable young man in the world loved and desired her. And she was all he thought she was and all she thought she should be. Validation, her psychology texts called the phenomenon.

She didn't need the sex for validation, she noted parenthetically to herself. Charlie validated her in a hundred ways every day. But as forms of validation went, this really packed a punch. She gazed adoringly down at Charlie and wondered what thoughts were running through his mind.

Charlie's thoughts were simpler. After initially tensing up - worried that he wouldn't be good enough at this most basic of acts, that he would finish too soon, that he'd zig when he should zag – he experienced a gentle epiphany.   
  
_This really_ is _no big deal. It's wonderful – amazing even – but it's just... us, just one more friendly activity we can share. Yes, it's an expression of love, but we express love all the time._

_Also, wow, this is great._

Charlie relaxed thoroughly. Lucy was doing all the work – that didn't seem fair, but he saw her ecstatic expression, and gave himself a pass. She was enjoying herself. It was beautiful. And he was helping!

Lucy experimented with different angles of thrust, different speeds, different intensities. She knew that less than half of all women could achieve orgasm through intercourse – something to do, perhaps with variations in the position of the clitoris – but as she settled on a formula that worked for her, she became sure she was one of the lucky ones.

She knew Charlie was close – closer than her – and slowed down just a bit. In all the sex scenes she'd ever seen or read, the partners achieved simultaneous orgasms their first time together, even if they, like she and Charlie, were completely inexperienced.

She knew this was nonsense. She didn't expect it, and so was not disappointed when, before she had reached that point herself, Charlie cried “Oh, God!” and came with a power that stunned both of them. When she'd made him come the previous day, he'd been almost silent, and barely moved. Today he yelled, and thrashed beneath her.

This made Lucy so happy, she almost came at the thought of it. But not quite.

Still, she was close. She continued her rocking motions, and Charlie, spent as he was, remained hard long enough to get her to her destination.

It was a wonderful release. Not the best ever – that had been yesterday when Charlie had had his head buried between her thighs – but certainly not bad for the first time.

Lucy moaned – in all sincerity, but playing it up a bit to assuage any doubts Charlie might have had about his performance. Charlie was fragile, still stunned that a girl, any girl, wanted him. When she'd helped build his confidence a bit, they could start discussing particulars, working out the kinks – hell, discovering their kinks, if they had any.

For now, they'd just had a wonderful experience, Lucy was as happy as she'd ever been, and after a long, passionate kiss and a whispered “I love you so much,” Charlie was licking his way down her chest, her belly, and around her inner thighs – teasing her a bit – before settling in to give his superpower a workout.

_Life is good,_ they both thought to themselves.

 


	17. (An Interlude)

With her mentor otherwise occupied, Sally spent the week planning an act of dissent, a one-woman demonstration in the name of freedom, anti-fascism and (if she was honest with herself) self-promotion. Perhaps even martyrdom to the cause of... well, all the causes.

She would become the face of the anti-establishment movement in Hennepin Falls.

It would all happen on the first day of school – why wait?

At just the right moment, she would make a Statement. There would be anger, fear, chaos. There would be anarchy.

She would be “arrested,” of course – but she would shout out her Message as she was being dragged away. She would be taken to the principal's office, where she would speak truth to power. She would be suspended and sent home.

On her way out the door, she would open her backpack and scatter the hundreds of fliers she had created: slogans, peace symbols, unpopular facts, rhetoric, blasphemy, heresy.

Her parents would be apoplectic, of course. She'd be sent to her room and lose all of her privileges for the length of her suspension or longer. All the more time to make fliers and plot her next act of rebellion.

The truth would be heard, and she would be a legend.

 


	18. Chapter 18

Miri was in love.

Sure, Marcie was adorable, and amazing in bed, but that wasn't it.

It was her mind. Her odd, inscrutable, brilliant, polymorphously off-kilter mind. A conversation with Marcie, as often as not, was like reading a philosophy major's Masters thesis on acid.

But just as often, she was plain spoken, compassionate, and as good a listener as any partner Miri had ever had.

She'd encountered the personality type before. After learning of her brother's death in 1970, Miriam Finkelstein, age 14, suffered a violent breakdown that landed her in a psychiatric residence for children near Buffalo. During her four months there, the only other patient she connected with was Damien, a 15 year-old boy from Connecticut who was obsessed with computers, NASA, and death.

Damien had been brought in the week before, having attempted to messily slit his wrists with a shard of a broken mainboard after his older sister had been murdered by her jealous, psychopathic boyfriend. He had not spoken a word since his arrival, but developed an immediate fascination with Miri.

On her third day at the facility, during art therapy, Damien handed her a drawing of a two robots holding hands and said “for you.” As the therapist guiding the session ran out to tell Damien's case worker that the boy had spoken, Miri – barely able to speak, herself, examined the drawing with amusement and said “thank you.”

Damien held out his hand – not tenderly, but in a businesslike manner. Miri shook Damien's hand and the boy went back to his pen and paper.

Over the next month, Damien opened up more and more, but only with Miri. In the presence of his therapist, his psychiatrist, his case worker, his parents – silence. Alone with Miriam, would speak cheerfully for half an hour at a time about computer programming, the Apollo missions, and how he wanted to die.

Miri still had all of the drawings he'd done for her – robots, spaceships, supercomputers, and graveyards – in a folder in her bedroom. At the bottom of the folder was the last sheet of paper he'd given her – a drawing of a robot (Miri) standing at a gravestone. There was a simple message beneath the scene: “I love you. Goodbye.”

He had slipped the paper beneath the door of her room one night before committing suicide. How he'd managed it was kept secret from the other patients in the facility, but there were no attempts to deny that it had happened. The rumor had traveled too fast, and the was the matter of all that blood in the doorway of his room that morning.

The incident left Miri more confused than anything else, at first. It had made sense that a boy who had lost his sister in such a violent, pointless manner would become obsessed with death. Miri had as well, though she did not express it. But somehow, she never thought Damien actually wanted to die.

She had seen the scars on his wrists, but thought they were like the self-inflicted scars on her own body. Miri had been cutting herself in the month between her brother's death and her breakdown, but was dimly aware that the cutting was an attempt to exert some form of control in the face of chaos. To experience pain on her own terms. She had not been trying to permanently harm herself.

She couldn't imagine truly wanting to die.

In the wake of the incident, Miri – who had begun speaking voluminously in therapy – herself fell silent. If they'd just allowed her to cut herself a little, she might have continued speaking; but she was on suicide watch. Her every action was monitored. The only form of control she had at her disposal was a vow of silence.

Eventually, though trial and error, her doctors arrived at a combination of medications and therapeutic strategies that worked for her. She returned to school a year behind but caught up by the time she graduated, skipping tenth grade.

However, the once whimsical girl had become largely humorless, grimly determined to get on with the business of growing up so she could leave the house where her brother's room lay in state, exactly as it was the day he left for basic training but for a layer of dust.

She passed the room every day, its door forever open at her mother's insistence. The woman was not given to superstition, but just as one leaves the door open for Elijah at a Seder, she left Daniel Finkelstein's door open in case he returned of a dark night and didn't want to wake his family up fumbling at the doorknob.

The day after she received her high school diploma, with nothing but the clothes on her back (and a fair amount of cash she'd received in the form of graduation presents) Miri boarded a train for Vermont, where she hitchhiked from Montpelier to Norton to join Earth People's Park, which she was shocked to discover was not run like a true commune and was merely space where anyone who cared to could settle and make their own way.

Miri, completely unprepared but resourceful, found a rugged woman who was more than happy to provide for her in return for her presence in her trailer, and respectful enough to not demand her sexual favors as part of the deal.

Perhaps she was so gracious because she'd sensed that Miri would hardly need to be coerced. Half an hour after she met Jennifer Jean Stovick, she was tearing the woman's clothes off with an enthusiasm that surprised even Miri herself.

Miri was attracted to both men and women, but, perhaps because young men who were important to her had a way of dying, she tended to shy away from men. She'd had crushes on girls in high school, but it was not until that moment that she realized how powerful was the attraction.

Jennifer – older by a decade, confident, radical – became Miri's mentor. She had dedicated most of her life to smashing the patriarchy, but had just recently retreated to the Earth People's Park, weary from the fight. Guilty over abandoning the struggle, she delighted in having a disciple.

Miri arrived at the Park disaffected, apolitical and sexually neutral. Within a week, she was a fledgling Radical Lesbian Feminist. Despite being angrily politicized, Miri found herself experiencing joy for the first time since her brother's death. There was an enemy – the establishment – but its reach did not extend to the Earth People's Park.

With only one set of clothes in her possession, and square ones at that, Miri went naked her second day at the Park, liked it, and spent most of her time there in that state, or nearly so. Monogamy being, according to Jennifer, and unnatural and repressive arrangement, Miri slept casually with a dozen women, and a handful of men, in her first two months at the Park.

She reveled in her sexuality and expanded her mind with many of the illegal substances the local government didn't bother harassing the residents of the Earth People's Park over. The sanitary conditions were less than ideal, but every few weeks Miri and Jennifer took Jennifer's truck into town for toilet paper, tampons, and a few indulgences (chocolate candy for Miri, grape soda for Jennifer).

After about eight months – much of is spent weathering a miserable Vermont winter – the appeal of the Park became lost on Miri. If not for her deep connection to Jennifer, she might have left in December, when her money ran out before it had purchased her enough winter gear to get through the season comfortably. There was a certain romance, she supposed, to huddling against the cold with your lover; but it was not enough.

As the awful winter gave way reluctantly to a glorious spring, Miri was still locked in indecision. She might have been so indefinitely if events outside her control had not intervened.

The townspeople of Norton had had an uneasy truce with the residents of the park since its establishment in 1971. In the past year, tensions had increased rapidly – Miri had noticed the shopkeepers becoming much less friendly in the last few months – and in May of 1975, when several townies carrying rifles politely suggested to a group of three marijuana growers that they cease and desist from deflowering every teenage girl in the town. The confrontation had escalated to a ten-man Mexican standoff by the time the state troopers arrived.

48 hours later, Miri was back in he parents' home in Brooklyn, taking her first hot shower since mid-1974.

All these events swirled through Miri's mind as she sat half-naked in Marcie's bed, watching the girl pace back and forth in her bathrobe, still dripping from the shower, expounding on the virtues of new lightweight alloys with extraordinary tensile strength that could revolutionize space colonization.

“Think of it – a 20-foot girder, 50 times as strong as steel, that you could lift over your head with one hand. You could build a whole space station that weighed less than 1000 pounds... I mean, in space it would be weightless, of course, but getting the materials into orbit would be easy. It would take less rocket power than an Apollo mission. Now, construction would be another thing entirely. You'd have to send multiple crews, multiple times. There would be thousands of hours of spacewalk time. Very costly, very dangerous. But once you have a small station established, expanding it would be easier, and as it expanded, more manpower would be there ongoingly. In a decade or so, you could have a full-fledged space colony! Something large enough to be self-sustaining – plants and trees generating oxygen, hydroponic farms for food. God, I'd love to live in a space colony. Wouldn't you? Would you move with me to a space colony one day? We could be role models – the first lesbian couple in space. Have you ever thought about what it would be like having sex in zero-gravity? So many possibilities. They'd have to create a new Kama Sutra. Ooh! We should do that anyway. Do you know someone who draws? We could come up with a few dozen positions only possible without gravity, get them illustrated... 'A Sutra for the Space Age!' I bet we could find a publisher for that, if the art was good. I wonder who the first people to have sex in space will be. If they don't start hiring some female astronauts, it's gonna be two gay guys. Wouldn't that just piss 'em off. The first space station would be like Fire Island in orbit. Then they'd _have_ to start using women as astronauts, too, if they wanted heteros in space. Ha! 'Heteroooooos iiiiiiiiiiinnnn Spaaaaaaaaaaace!”

“Marcie...,” Miri attempted to interject.

“I wonder if any of the Apollo crews had an outer-space circle-jerk – you know, just to see what it was like to get off in zero gravity. I mean, it's gotta be different, at least for guys, right – there's fluid dynamics involved.”

“Thank you for putting that image in my head,” said Miri.

“Yeah. Little floating globs of come all through the space capsule, getting in the ventilation system... well, I guess they could just jerk off into whatever tubes they peed into. You know, the Soviets put a woman in space in 1963; it's like the one thing their space program did first that the U.S. didn't care about. At all. Fifteen years later and outer space is still a sausage fest.”

“I thought NASA hired a woman astronaut this year,” said Miri.

“They chose a woman _candidate_. Who knows whether they'll use her or not. Even if they do, they'll probably have some guy as a backup in case she gets her fucking period the day of the launch.”

Marcie flopped on the bed, having made her point about super-strong alloys and space colonization. Miri immediately untied the robe's fabric belt and opened up the garment. Rather than follow her initial urge to ravish Marcie for the fourth time that day, Miri stopped for a moment to appreciate the girl splayed out before her.

Marcie was plump – perhaps 20 “extra” pounds on her tiny frame, in the form of a sweet, jiggly belly and a thickness to her thighs and calves; her small breasts would have been mere bumps were she skinny. There was just the barest hint of a second chin on her round face.

Miri thought her spectacularly beautiful. Her first lover, Jennifer, had been, in her own words, “your basic butch dyke,” and that had excited Miri tremendously. Marcie, on the other hand, was, physically, perhaps the most delicate, softly feminine woman she had ever been with. And there was a poignancy about her – such passion and capacity for love beneath her autistic, Mr. Spock-like demeanor. And she had been lonely for so long.

Miri realized that some of her tender feelings for Marcie were maternal in nature. She wanted to nurture the girl, and put a little gold star sticker of approval on every one of her craft projects, like the pudding-cup space station. Of course, that was more of a “teacher's pet” dynamic.

Oh, shit – Sally.

It had been over two weeks since she'd last met with her protege. The kid seemed to be doing fine transforming herself under her own steam, but Miri was worried about Sally's tone the last time they'd sat together in the park. The girl had seemed cagey. Miri feared Sally was going to get in a lot of trouble, and that she wouldn't be able to prevent it.

 _Big surprise_ , she chided herself. _You did everything but hand her a copy of_ The Anarchist Cookbook.

She made a mental note to call Sally that afternoon, and see if she could talk the girl down from...

It was difficult to think with Marcie stroking her inner thigh with her toes, working her way closer and closer to... Miri purred.

“I was wondering what it would take to get your attention.” Marcie sat up and put her arms lazily over Miri's shoulders. “Whatcha been thinking about?”

“I... I have absolutely no idea.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FWIW, the Earth People's Park was a real thing. However, I can't find any detailed information on its history other than the dates and vague mentions of increasing tensions between the Park's inhabitants and the townies. The particulars of the armed standoff that signaled the beginning of the end of the Park are completely made up.
> 
> If I find out any more, I'll edit the chapter to reflect the true history.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm not very happy with this chapter. It covered everything I wanted it to, but the writing is off. I had an unexpected break in the writing due to illness, and I'm not quite in the zone yet. 
> 
> I'll be revising this chapter with a vengeance later, but for now, at least the story is moving forward.

The summer passed pleasantly enough. Most days, Miri, Charlie and Lucy would converge on Marcie's room where, as far as the Browns and Van Pelts were concerned, they would play board games, listen to music, watch TV, and talk; they would have been horrified to know that at least once a day, Marcie and her secret hippie friend would find something to do outside so that Charlie and Lucy could make love in private, and that Charlie and Lucy would return the favor.

What would have given their parents heart attacks was the fact that the couples occasionally would not part company for lovemaking. Around once a week – though hardly on a schedule – they would all share Marcie's bed, one couple or another making love while the other watched, or both couples making love side by side. Sometimes on these occasions, Marcie or Miri, or both, would reach out to Lucy, and they would hold hands, or kiss. This pleased Charlie more than he would have suspected, though he was a bit disappointed, irrationally perhaps, that neither Marcie or Miri invited him to participate in these moments. He was strongly attracted to both of them, and envied Lucy a bit.

Not that he was complaining. While he had become much less insecure about his desirability and his own sexual prowess over the course of the summer, he marveled daily at the turn his life had taken. That he and Lucy would eventually be lovers had seemed inevitable in retrospect; but that he would spend his days as he had the past eight weeks – unimaginable. In fact, had he not experienced it's natural unfolding from one day to the next; had someone described to him three months ago what the summer had in store for him, he might have been nearly as appalled as his own parents would have been.

It simply was not the natural order of things, he had believed. He'd read about hippies and free love and group sex and more, but they had been no more real to him than European history. Yes, those things happened, but they had nothing to do with his, Charlie Brown's, life. How could they? He did not grow up on a hippie commune any more than he grew up in medieval France. He was technically a Baby Boomer, but for all intents and purposes, born and bred, as he had been, in Hennepin Falls, he had never experienced the 60s.

More remarkable to him – once the novelty of having a sex life wore off – was the depth of the connections he had made with Marcie and Miri, and the fact that his rapport with Lucy could grow still deeper than it already had.

Between witty banter and giddy discussions of all things sexual, all four had bared their souls to one another. Lucy and Charlie knew Marcie and Miri as well as they had known each other two months previously. Miri's trauma and Marcie's autism brought out the future clinician in Lucy, and there had been entire days of unlicensed group therapy so engrossing that all four had forgotten to eat or use the bathroom, much less have sex.

At times they lamented that they were all, already, at such young ages, broken people. At others, they were overjoyed to find they were fixing themselves and each other.

This much was certain: Lucy was going to be a very good psychologist. She already was.

“Did you feel guilty that you couldn't save Damien?” Lucy asked Miri.

Miri nodded. “I still do. I know I was a kid, and I was really messed up myself. But it doesn't matter. I should have known. I mean, he told me he wanted to die, over and over again. But I just didn't believe it, somehow. Why didn't I tell anyone?”

“ _They_ knew he was suicidal. And it was their failure that he was able to do it. It shouldn't have been physically possible in a facility like that. It absolutely wasn't your fault, or your responsibility.”

“I know. I know. I know it intellectually. But I can't convince myself of it. Not deep down.”

“What about your brother?” asked Lucy.

Miri's eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

“Did you feel guilty that you couldn't save your brother?”

Miri became angry. “What are you talking about? He was in Vietnam. What could I possibly have done?”

Lucy knew she'd gotten to the crux of the matter, was proud of herself for doing so, and guilty for her elation at having had an insight that was going to hurt her friend. She pressed on.

“It doesn't have to make sense. You were a kid. Did you feel protective of your brother before he went away?”

Miri was silent for an long interval, eyes closed. Finally she said “yeah. He was five years older, but he was so sweet and innocent. We had happy childhoods, but there were always bullies out there, and girls that broke his heart. I wanted to beat up anyone who hurt him – I even got close enough to try a few times, but he held me back.”

“You must have been terrified when they sent him to 'Nam.” said Lucy.

“Every minute of every day. And I had nightmares every night.” Miri's eyes were damp. She lapsed again into silence.

Marcie hugged Miri to her. “I can't even imagine,” she said.

Lucy let the time pass without comment. Charlie had questions, but he knew better than to speak them. The moment was delicate.

Miri continued. “You know, when you spend a long time fearing something horrible... you'd think you'd be more prepared. But it's worse. You're never prepared. The fear just builds up and builds up, and when the horrible thing happens, it's like the whole weight of it hits you at once. You can't breathe, you can't stand up.

“You know that sinking feeling? It's scary even when it's something trivial, like realizing you just did something that's going to fuck up your life or something. But when it's this kind of thing, it's like your life, your soul draining out of you.

“When mom saw the guys in uniform heading for the door, she screamed, and collapsed on the floor. She refused to open the door, and when I tried to do it, she grabbed me by the leg and hit me – she'd never laid a finger on me my entire life, and never did afterward. I don't think she even knows she did it.”

Miri wept. “I can only imagine how she felt. How she still feels. I felt like _I'd_ failed Danny. I hated myself for letting it happen, as irrational as that is. But she was his _mother_. It must have been like what I felt, but a hundred times worse. How do you even go on after something like that?

“I had to call my dad at work – mom couldn't do it. She was practically catatonic, which was terrifying. When I told dad, he didn't say anything for a moment. Then he said 'I'll be right home,' and hung up.

“It took him half an hour to get home. I sat on the couch with my mother. She couldn't speak. She was just shaking. In shock. For a while I resented that she sat there and didn't say anything to me. She was my mom; she was supposed to comfort me. Now, of course, I understand. But I felt abandoned.

“When dad got home...” for a moment, Miri could not speak. She seemed to have become her mother – mute, shaking with grief and shock.

“It's okay,” said Lucy, “you don't have to say any more.”

But she continued. “I'd never seen my dad cry. Never seen him face anything difficult without joking or shrugging it off. I wasn't expecting _that_ , of course, but I thought he'd be strong. I thought maybe he'd be able to comfort me where mom couldn't...

“When he came in, I had that sinking feeling again. He'd died. Died as surely as Danny. He was pale, he could barely stand up, barely make his way across the room to the couch, to mom. He didn't even acknowledge my presence. I understand now, of course. But I never felt so alone in my life. I ran into my room and started breaking things, tearing my posters off the walls. I ripped the head off my favorite stuffed animal. I screamed into my pillow and cried in it until it was soaked through.”

Marcie stroked Miri's hair and wished for a time machine to go back and change the past, to excise this pain from her lover like removing a tumor.

Miri sobbed. “It wasn't even grief at that point. It was anger. At myself.” She whispered “I'd failed. I couldn't protect him.”

Her companions jumped, startled, as she screamed “I couldn't save him!” and dissolved into wracking sobs.

It as Lucy's turn to experience the sinking feeling. It made her nauseous. She forgot how to breathe for a moment.

This had gone too far. She was out of her depth.

She took Miri and Marcie in her arms. “Shh. Shh. It's okay. You didn't do anything wrong. It wasn't your fault. There was nothing you could have done. I know you know that, but hear it from someone else. You're completely innocent.” Lucy wept. “I'm sorry I pushed you into this. I just thought I was so clever...”

Charlie watched as his three best friends clung to each other as if for dear life. Should he join them, he wondered. No, he was not really a part of this moment. He'd simply been present as Miri had bared her soul. This was between Miri, her lover, and her unlicensed therapist.

In the end, Lucy and Charlie left, to let Marcie comfort Miri in private. It was nearly dinner time anyway, time to make their way home to normal family life – a milieu that felt more alien and artificial to them by the day. Nearly eight weeks of sexual freedom and self-discovery had changed them, permanently. Getting through the impending school year would require 24/7 method acting. They would have to pretend to be something they no longer were: normal.

But Charlie had no time to ponder this. Lucy was in crisis.

She walked quickly, head down, muttering “what the hell did I just do? What was I thinking? I'm not a therapist. I'm just a kid who's read a bunch of psychology texts. Dammit dammit dammit, I'm such an asshole...”

“Hey,” said Charlie, panting with the effort of catching up with her, “give yourself a break. You did a great thing – you helped Miri learn something about herself. You're brilliant.”

Lucy stopped in her tracks and turned to face Charlie, eyes ablaze, angry in a way he hadn't seen since they were children. But this time, it was directed at herself.

“I had no right to go spelunking in her brain like that! I opened an old wound and had no idea what to do with the pain it caused her, how to help her work through it. I'm a fraud.” She sat on the sidewalk and wept.

Charlie sat facing her, cross-legged, and encouraged Lucy to mirror his pose. He leaned toward her until their foreheads touched.

“Look at me.”

Lucy shook her head.

“Look at me,” Charlie commanded, tenderly. Lucy complied.

Charlie met her gaze, and was momentarily lost in the depths of her dark eyes. He wiped the tears from her cheek.

“You did a good thing. The next time you see Miri, she'll thank you. She needed to know that about herself. Now that she realizes that she's been carrying all that guilt around, she can address it. I know you didn't want to leave while she was still upset, but she'll be fine. Marcie is probably comforting her brains out as we speak.”

Lucy chuckled, relaxing. “Yeah, you're right. I could do with a little 'comforting,' myself. Sorry we didn't get around to it today. Rain check?”

“You better believe it.”

 


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I'm not at all happy with the writing in this chapter. I should be back up to speed going forward, as this and the previous chapter were not part of my original draft, whereas I'll have a first draft to work from and improve upon going forward.

“In honor of the final day of our Summer of Love and Therapy,” announced Miri, “I thought we should have a big sendoff. So...” she reached into her backpack and withdrew something that looked like a very slim, tapered cigarette “...smoke 'em if you got 'em.”

Miri had not wanted to wait this long to introduce her friends to the wonders of pot – for one thing, she was dying to see what Marcie was like stoned – but it had taken her this long just to find a supplier in the area. Discretion was of the utmost importance, and if anyone in the vicinity was partaking, well, they were hardly going to advertise the fact.

Charlie's heart dropped for a moment, but he recovered quickly, his curiosity overriding his natural tendency to fear the new.

Marcie grinned like a maniac; Lucy alone spoke. “ _Fin_ ally,” she said. She'd been expecting this all summer, and been disappointed that Miri had not, so far, shared any of the stash she incorrectly assumed her hippie friend had. Also, Marcie had been winning at Monopoly for the first time, and was not a gracious winner; Lucy had had enough her friend's gloating.

Marcie rushed to her girlfriend's side and said “gimme!” As an afterthought, she kissed Miri. Regretting her faux pas, she added “sorry, I'm just really excited.”

“Me too, kiddo,” agreed Miri. “Come on, sit,” she said, to her companions. They sat in a tight circle on the floor, in the cross-legged style Miri and Marcie had adopted from Charlie and Lucy. Miri dug through her backpack for a lighter.

Noting the anticipatory tension in the room, she said “Everyone, relax. I know you're excited, but that's not really the mood we're going for here.” She dug the lighter out of her backpack and held it up to the joint suspended from Marcie's lips. “Okay, kiddo – now take it really easy. You've never smoked before – not even a cigarette. You're going to get it wrong, and if you try to take in too much at once, you'll gag even harder than you have to.”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” said Marcie. “Don't worry. I get it.”

But she didn't. Or at least she had no idea what constituted “taking it easy.” About a quarter of the joint was ash before Marcie ended her first drag. ( _Oh shit,_ thought Miri.) Luckily, Marcie also had no idea how to inhale properly, so the majority of the resulting smoke left her mouth without touching her esophagus.

The tiny bit she did inhale irritated her unaccustomed lungs enough cause her to convulse, sending the joint flying. She turned a vivid green and coughed energetically for the better part of a minute. She kept herself from vomiting by sheer willpower.

Miri held her friend to her. “Easy there. Easy. It's okay. Next time, you won't even have the urge to puke.”

“Are you kidding?” said Marcie, her face still a sickly teal, “that was great.” She attempted to laugh, but it came out as a wracking cough.

Miri spent a full minute looking for the joint. Lucy and Charlie could have told her that It had landed in her hair – lit end up, still burning – but it was more fun to let her discover it for herself.

Unfazed, she plucked the joint daintily from her hair and asked her companions “So what have we learned?”

“That Marcie's not good at smoking,” said Lucy. “Come on, give it. My turn.”

Miri handed Lucy the joint and waited for the show to begin, but to her surprise the young woman took a careful, brief drag, inhaled slowly, held the smoke in her lungs for several seconds, and exhaled gently. By that point, if Lucy had blown smoke rings, Miri would not have been taken aback.

Miri applauded. “And that's how you do it,” she said to the rest of the class. “Lucy. How do you feel?”

“A little dizzy. Not high. That'll take a minute, right?”

“Something like that, not much more” said Miri. “This is pretty potent shit.”

Lucy gazed thoughtfully at the ceiling for about thirty seconds. “Aaaaaaaand here we go,” she said, finally. “Yep, that's it.”

“Woo,” she added, thoughtfully. She unfolded her legs and leaned against Charlie, completely limp – not out of necessity, but in anticipation of needing to do so eventually.

Marcie, now fully recovered, declared. “Okay, do-over.”

“You'll get your chance,” said Charlie. Lucy had placed the joint in her hair, in tribute to Miri. However, it was not securely upright, and was beginning to topple. Charlie grabbed it before it could singe Lucy's scalp.

Rather than give himself the opportunity to reconsider, he placed the joint immediately to his lips and took a quick puff, then exhaled equally quickly. He waited a few moments and shrugged.

“Nothin',” he said.

Miri rolled her eyes. Lucy poked him in the ribs with her index finger. “It has to go in your lungs, not just your mouth,” she said.

“Oh. Right.” Charlie attempted to make another go at it, but Miri grabbed the joint. “No do-overs. Wait for your next turn.” She handed it to Marcie.

“What about you?” asked Marcie.

“Don't worry, I brought my own. Right now I'm here strictly as a coach.”

Marcie shrugged, and placed the now half-depleted joint to her lips. She paused for a moment, to center herself – another coughing fit like the last one and she'd wind up in the emergency room – and did her best to imitate Lucy.

Her lungs and throat were still irritated from her first attempt, so she did not escape another coughing fit, but this one was brief and comparatively mild. Miri used a break between Marcie's coughs as an opportunity to kiss her on the cheek. “That's more like it.”

Marcie held the joint out to Lucy, who attempted to grab it with her toes, but after a few moments realized that she had not actually managed to move her leg, and that Marcie was gazing at her quizzically. She smiled sheepishly and took possession of the joint manually. Less stylish, but effective.

Lucy was just barely buzzed, and liked it. This time, she chose to be much more ambitious, inhaling more than half of what remained of the joint and holding it in her lungs for substantially longer than she had previously. She attempted to blow smoke rings as she exhaled – forgetting that she did not know how to do so. Marcie observed the ensuing explosion of coughs and gagging with some smugness. She made a mental note to feel guilty for that later.

“You okay, kid?” Miri asked Lucy.

Boy was she ever.

She was traveling at 90 mph sitting still (she now understood why people drove so slowly when they were stoned). The room had a lovely golden glow to it, and love radiated from her friends in visible waves. The part of her mind that observed her, detached... the part of her mind that observed...

That part of her mind had taken a leave of absence. After a few attempts to invoke it, she forgot its existence. She would have to be pleased about the effect later.

“This is greaaaaaaaaat,” she said. As she spoke, she had the distinct illusion that she was peering up out of her mouth from inside her own throat. The idea tickled her so that she burst into laughter, giggling like a child.

Satisfied that at least one of her friends had achieved escape velocity, Miri plucked the joint from Lucy's hand and handed it to Charlie, who was too busy watching his girlfriend with amusement (and on some level, a certain amount of concern) to take it for himself.

“Okay,” said Miri, “take it slow, and remember to inhale. If you can, hold it in your lungs for a few seconds. Then exhale, also slowly. Tortoise and the hare.”

Charlie did his best to follow Miri's instructions. The smoke made his lungs itch, but less so than the smoke he inhaled when in the company of tobacco smokers. He resisted a single convulsion – his body's attempt to expel the foreign substance immediately, and managed to exhale slowly, if a bit shakily.

“Much better,” said Miri.

Marcie reached for the joint in Charlie's hand but, not insignificantly altered by her previous hit, overreached and toppled over, her face landing in Charlie's crotch. Both laughed hysterically, but when Marcie jokingly bit at him, just a nibble, she misjudged again and Charlie leaped away, swearing.

“Ow! Ow ow ow! Shit! What the... why?!”

Marcie was genuinely sorry, but couldn't help giggling as she exclaimed “oh, shit! I am so sorry...”

“Oh,” said Charlie, “so you think that's funny?” But he guessed she had a point, as he began to giggle, himself, even as he remained bent over in pain.

Lucy, concerned but in hysterics, offered to “kiss it and make it better.”

All three were by now sprawled on the floor, giggling, coughing, and rolling around aimlessly. Within 5 minutes, they were asleep, by chance in a loose pile, Charlie on the bottom, Marcie on top.

“Jeez,” said Miri. “What a bunch of lightweights.” She withdrew the other joint from her backpack and, what the hell, smoked it in its entirety in just under two minutes, and crawled over to the pile to pass out atop her girlfriend.

_Next time,_ she thought, _brownies._

 


	21. Chapter 21

Miri had once shown Sally a photograph of a Nazi rally in Germany during World War Two. Every member of the crowd stood with their right hand raised in salute, _heil Hitler._ Except for one man who remained seated, arms folded, smirking in contempt. That man – his identity lost to the ages – was one of Miri's heroes.

And one of Sally's.

Sally strode quickly down the sidewalk on her way to her first day of ninth grade, elated, determined and, she had to admit to herself, not a little frightened.

 _Pull yourself together_ , she chided herself, _you have nothing to fear but fear itself._

 _And bears_ , she thought, idly. _Bears will fucking kill you_.

 

* * *

 

  
Charlie felt confident – a new experience where school was concerned. His thinking was clearer than ever. He was going to do better academically. He was one of the smart kids; he knew that now. He would sit at the front of the class, answer questions, and do his homework. He was ready.

He also had the pleasure of knowing that all of those kids who thought of him as a loser would kill to have what he had now. If taunted, he would not respond, but smile and think _you fucking idiot. You have no idea who you're dealing with. I spent every day this summer getting laid and hanging out with three naked women. I've done stuff you don't even know enough to include in your jerk-off fantasies. If you knew how cool I was, you'd worship me. But you don't get to know about my secret life. You're not on the list._

Lucy was thinking along similar lines. She knew her girlfriends at school would ask how she spent her summer. It would be tempting to say “fucking my boyfriend every day” – particularly as she was considered one of the un-sexy girls at school.

But no, she would just smile and say “not much.”

It was beautiful. Validating. The boys and girls who judged her every day for her looks, and for being a nerd, couldn't hurt her anymore. If some skinny girl she passed in the hall looked at her, clearly thinking “poor thing, she'll never get a date. I bet she's never even kissed a boy,” she would think _I fucked my boyfriend every day for ten weeks, you pixie stick bitch. He ate me out while you sat in the tub and jerked off to Peter Frampton. I'm a fucking woman. Go suck on a pacifier._

It would add delicious spice to complement her inevitable straight A's. This year was going to be...

Charlie and Lucy were jolted out of their reveries. The streets were teeming with kids, cars and buses. It was like New York City at rush hour, thought Charlie, minus the taxi cabs. And the tall buildings. And the famous urine smell. And the sounds of a dozen foreign languages. And...

It was very, very crowded.

Most of the faces they saw were unfamiliar – the kids from the new development, presumably. Mostly ex-New Yorkers, they dressed differently, carried themselves differently, and spoke differently. Charlie adn Lucy were used to Miri's Brooklyn accent by now, and heard it in many of the voices from the crowd – only louder and angrier.

They were a block from the school building, and could see students straining, pushing their way through the entrance. It was a mess.

The real chaos, however, was inside.

The halls were packed. The facility was simply not built to accommodate the number of bodies present. It was hot as hell – possibly 20 degrees hotter than the outside in places. Every face radiated loathing – the new kids for the third-rate facility and the tenth-rate local kids they were being forced to associate with; the local kids for the New Yorkers' alien presence and their condescension.

Both groups had a point.

The halls closest to the entrance, where the auditorium was located, were the worst, packed to the consistency of a rubber brick. The only reason any movement at all was possible was that every single student was drenched with lubricating sweat.

Lucy and Charlie were still outside when the auditorium doors opened. Even from there, they could feel the gust of cool air that spilled out into the hall. There was a rush of universal aggression as desperate students, knowing it would quickly be standing room only, fought ferociously to get inside in time to get a seat.

Lucy and Charlie made a silent, mutual decision to simply not engage in the competition. They would hang back until everyone was in, then enter with their dignity in tact.

They felt so much more mature, so much more worldly than their peers. No, they weren't their peers, were they? Call them their cohort. It wasn't just that they were now very experienced sexually when most of their fellow students were virgins. They had been living on a much more sophisticated plane than the others. There were the endless intellectual conversations, the more urbane worldview, the sense of comfort in their own bodies when most of their cohort were struggling with body shame of one kind or another.

Perhaps more significant than all of that, there was their was their knowledge of psychology. With the knowledge that Lucy had shared with Charlie (and the insights they'd gained over the summer), they could observe their fellow students and understand what was going on in their minds. They could read their body language, their speech patterns; they could interpret the choreography of a conflict. They could spend five minutes with anyone and walk away with a good sense of that person's strengths, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities.

It was like having a superpower.

They, of course, had their own weaknesses and vulnerabilities, but they were capable of detachment if necessary.

No one could hurt them. Not anymore.

 

* * *

 

Sally was taken aback by the throngs of kids pouring into Betsy Ross Middle School. She'd known about the impending influx of students from the new development, but had been so focused on her own plans to sow chaos that she hadn't given it any thought – particularly not as it pertained to those plans.

It was actually a boon, she decided. The more people, the more chaos.

But there was a downside. It was critical that she get a good seat in the auditorium, which would be well over capacity. If she wasn't sitting, she couldn't refuse to stand to the Pledge of Allegiance. And if she was too far in back, or in the middle of a row, she would be less visible than she desired.

Worst case scenario, she supposed, if she couldn't get a seat, she could sit down on the floor and refuse to recite the Pledge.

Still, she was a few minutes ahead of schedule. She could probably get in in time to get a good seat.

She strode quickly toward the entrance. Her hippie garb garnered her some stares and a few choice comments. Most were nasty, but she did hear one appreciative one. She couldn't identify the source, beyond the voice being male.

The halls were crowded, but not yet fully packed. It helped that the new kids didn't know where the auditorium was. Sally took the quickest route she knew.

There were dozens of kids crowded against the auditorium doors, and more streaming into the vicinity, but she was in a position to get a seat. She settled into place, shoulder to shoulder with simpering 14-year old girls and smelly 13-year old boys.

She had fun fielding comments and questions about her clothes.

One brutish lad leaned in, brows furrowed. “What the hell are you supposed to be?”

“Myself,” she replied. “I don't feel the need to conform to anyone else's standards.”

She recognized Jennifer Manning, one of the more popular girls. “Ooh, that's pretty,” Jennifer said. “What costume shop did you get it from?”

“It's not a costume. It's a fashion statement. The statement is “fuck you, bitch.'”

Okay, that one wasn't very elegant, but she managed to shock a large proportion of those listening with her language.

One boy, sweating profusely in a denim jacket, whispered “Cool threads. Know where I could score some pot?”

That was amusing. “No, but if you find out, let me know.”

The hallway was crammed now. It felt like a hundred degrees. _Come on,_ thought Sally, _let's do this._

Finally, the doors opened. Sally had no time to appreciate the lower temperature in the auditorium as she dashed for the front of the room in search of an aisle seat. She spotted her target but lost it to another student by a split second. “Fuck,” she shouted.

Her eyes darted. Yes! There, on the other side of the aisle – three possible targets. She lunged for the closest. She had one competitor, a chubby girl. Sally would be faster.

But the chubby girl had a lot of quick. Sally had to knock the poor girl over in a photo finish to get the seat.

The girl was infuriated. “Bitch,” she spat, and hobbled off to find another seat.

“I'm really sorry,” Sally shouted after her, “but it's really important that I sit here. You'll see why.” But the girl showed no sign of having heard her.

Sally made a mental note to find and befriend the girl at the first opportunity. She was genuinely sorry, and knew that chubby girls in middle and high school inhabited a particular sort of hell. It was horribly unfair. The truth was, the girl was really cute.

In just over a minute, the seats were completely filled. Students now fought for spaces where they could at least lean against the wall. When those were gone, one clever individual had the bright idea of sitting on the floor in front of the first row of seats. Observing this, students still filing in ran down the aisles to follow suit, but before most could get there, the remaining space had been filled by students who had been leaning against the wall close to the stage.

As the last students filed in, knowing better than to expect to find a seat but hoping at least for relief from the heat, they were disappointed. Full to capacity, the auditorium, swimming in body heat, was beyond the school's air conditioning's ability to cool. It was better than the hallway had been, but not by much.

Principal Connolly watched the whole spectacle from offstage. Shaken, disgusted, mortified, he strode purposefully to the podium. It wasn't going to be pleasant, but he could handle this.

Observing his discomfort, Sally actually felt bad for the man – particularly because she was about to make his day even worse. _Remember_ , Sally told herself, _he's your adversary, not your enemy. Compassion, always. But greater principles are at stake here._

Connolly was about to speak when someone handed him a note. He glanced at it, bowed his head and shook it as he laughed to himself.

“Good morning everyone,” he began. “I have been informed that we have exceeded the legal maximum capacity for this space by nearly one hundred persons. I'm afraid I must ask all students without proper seats to exit the auditorium, proceed to their homerooms, and wait until this assembly concludes and classes can begin.

“I apologize for this... well, I'll call it what it is: idiocy, especially to our new student from Peaceful Acres. Be assured that we welcome you with open arms, and will work to minimize the inevitable difficulties arising from the overcrowding. Thank you for your patience and again, my apologies.”

 _Dammit_ , thought Sally, _I like this guy. Actually, my little spectacle might be a welcome distraction for him._

Once the excess bodies had exited the auditorium – which quickly cooled down, to the relief of all - Connolly began again.

“All stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.”

Sally's heart pounded. This was it.

All rose, hands on hearts, and began to recite the Pledge. Except for one girl in tie-dye who sat with her arms folded and a contemptuous smirk on her face.

The girl standing next to Sally barked “Hey, stand up. You're supposed to stand up.”

“I choose not to,” replied Sally.

_...of the United States..._

The boy standing behind her smacked her in the head. “Stand up you idiot!”

News of the girl who would not stand radiated out around her.

_...the Republic for which..._

“Hey,” a boy shouted, “someone's not standing for the Pledge!”

This got Connolly's attention. _Oh great. Just what I need right now._

He scanned the auditorium and quickly located the girl dressed in bright colors, sitting defiantly in an aisle seat. The pledge faded out, replaced by murmurs and angry muttering.

He addressed Sally. “Young lady, why aren't you standing for the Pledge?”

Sally's heart raced but she spoke confidently and clearly. “Because I don't believe in it. I do not offer my allegiance to this country.”

The murmurs grew louder. There were angry shouts. The students closest to Sally began pushing and shoving her. The boy behind her smacked her head again.

This angered Connolly much more than the little blonde dissident. “Hey – none of that! Mr. White, did you see which students assaulted her?” Mr White nodded. “Good. Take them to my office right now.”

_Dammit. No, fuck it to hell. Why is he being nice to me? This is a disaster._

The principal returned his attention to Sally.

“Now, would you care to explain yourself?”

_Okay. Fine. A civil discussion. They'll still hear what I have to say._

“I do not accept or approve of the policies of our Federal government, particularly the actions of our military. The United States is a nation full of bigots and xenophobes, uninformed and ignorant. Our government is for sale, and our last president was a criminal.”

There was a shout. “Shut up, you fucking commie!”

Sally continued. “This is a nation founded on the genocide of the indigenous peoples, built on the backs of enslaved men and women kidnapped from Africa, and rampant with religious extremism and sexism. Women didn't even get the vote until 1920.”

There were volleys of shouts from all over the auditorium. “Commie!” “Pinko!” “Burn in hell!”

Sally loved it. “To this day, we oppress blacks, women, homosexuals – everyone but straight white men, to be honest, and anyone who speaks the truth to power.”

The shouts continued. The situation was spinning out of control.

“Young lady,” said Connolly, “you've made your point – quite eloquently, I might add. I suggest we now continue with the assembly as planned. Everyone please sit.”

But a few angry men – well, boys – wouldn't have it.

As the rest of the students sat, about half a dozen remained standing and moved to converge on Sally. Most were restrained by other students, but one – starting from much closer to her – eluded capture, lifted Sally roughly out of her chair, and placed her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. He ran up the aisle, unstoppable.

_I will not scream. I will not scream. I will not give him the satisfaction._

The brute, knocking down all who attempted to block him, plowed through the auditorium doors and into the hall.

 _I've got to admit,_ thought Sally, _this guy's good. I wonder if he's going to kill me._

She should have been terrified, but all she could think was “this is even better than what I had planned. I said my piece, and, live or die, I'm going to be a legend here.”

Dozens of people chased after them, but they could not be overtaken. They crashed though a door to the outside, setting off an alarm. Within seconds, her assailant reached his destination. He tossed her effortlessly into the dumpster, leapt up to close the lid, and stood proudly, waiting to let himself be apprehended.

Sally was unaware of the ensuing commotion outside. The dumpster was empty, and she had landed on her right side, cracking two ribs, as well as taking an impact to the head that nearly caused her to lose consciousness.

She floated through a blur of pain. Then there was a moment of sharp agony as she was lifted out of the dumpster, deepening the cracks in her ribs. Now she screamed, and passed out.

 


	22. Chapter 22

Sally awoke slowly, swimming through a haze of disorientation and pain. As her eyes focused, she recognized her father, mother and brother, and his brother's girlfriend. They met her gaze with a mixture of adoration and concern. For her parents, it was a visible effort – they did adore her, but at the moment, they were too frightened for her to feel any other emotion.

Miri, seated in a far corner of the hospital room, stood to join them, but Allan Brown stared daggers at her, and she returned to her seat.

 _I lived_ , thought Sally. _Hot damn – I get to be a_ living _legend._

She smiled at the loved ones gathered around her. She took a deep breath... and nearly passed out again.

“Goddammit,” she growled, “I thought these places were supposed to have pain medications.”

A nurse adjusted her drip. “You broke two ribs, dislocated your shoulder, and suffered a mild concussion,” she said. “It's gonna hurt for a while. But you should feel a bit better in a minute.”

Indeed, the tiny increase in her morphine was already spreading like a warm glow though her body. _Man,_ she thought, _I really should try some recreational drugs some time. This is great. Maybe Miri will let me try some pot._

No one spoke. She was being stared at – benevolently, to be sure, but it was starting to creep her out.

“What?” she demanded.

“I'm sorry, honey, I'm not sure what to say,” admitted her father. “I love you and I'm so relieved you're going to be okay, I can't describe it.

“But what you did today was completely reckless, and I'm worried about you. I don't know who you are anymore.” He glared at Miri. They had had a tense conversation earlier that day, and it was to Allan Brown's credit that he allowed Miri to be present despite not having reached any sort of truce with the infuriating woman.

Sally had told her parents that she had met “Miss Morrison,” a new teacher at her school, in the park, and they had had a wonderful conversation. Sally had asked Miss Morrison if she would tutor her over the summer, so she could catch up on a few things and prepare for the coming school year. Miss Morrison had agreed, and they met frequently in the park for lessons, mostly about American history – which had in fact been one of her weaker subjects.

Charlie had confirmed the story, and it had held up.

When the Browns met “Miss Morrison” in the waiting room, they knew they'd been had. By their own children.

The woman was a damn hippie. And in light of today's events, it was obvious just what the little communist had been teaching his daughter.

“I swear,” Miri had pleaded, “I had no idea she was going to do this. If I had, I would have stopped her.”

“What did you think was going to happen” Allan demanded, “with you feeding her all of that communist propaganda and lies?”

“That's not what I was doing. We were discussing history. And I'm not a communist, I'm a socialist.”

“Well, whatever -ism you subscribe to, you had no right to brainwash my daughter with it.”

“I didn't brainwash her. I gave her the facts, and let her draw her own conclusions.”

“So 'her own conclusion' was to dress and talk exactly like you.”

“She doesn't...”

“I swear, she was even imitating your stupid accent for a while.”

Miri prepared a retort, but thought the better of it.

The conversation had gone downhill from there; the only thing keeping Allan Brown from completely blowing his top was Miri's obvious concern for his daughter. She was clearly as shaken as he; in fact, he suspected that Miri truly loved Sally – a thought that concerned him faintly, itself, for reasons his mind shied away from.

Charlie stroked Sally's hair. “Kid, you are pretty bad-ass, you know that?”

Their mother blanched at Charlie's language, but said nothing.

“I'm even more disappointed in you, Charlie,” said his father. “You knew what was going on, and you aided and abetted it. You lied to my face. I feel like I don't know _you_ anymore, either. What else have you been lying about?”

Charlie felt a rush of guilt. He had never lied to his father – or anyone, in fact – before. He just wasn't capable of it. It was not, for the most part, a matter of morality – the idea simply terrified him. He knew he couldn't carry it off, that anyone he lied to would see though it immediately.

Yet he had lied to his parents – his parents! – without a second thought; and he'd lied by omission about what he and Lucy had been up to all summer. As it was, his parents had no idea what role Miri had played In his summer festivities, no idea that Charlie even knew Miri, much less that he'd seen her naked, and vice-versa, almost every day for three months.

What had happened to him?

And, of more immediate concern, just how much did his parents suspect? Charlie and Lucy's spending all day, every day, all summer, in the same place with the same person must have seemed unusual. It hadn't even occurred to him to say they were spending the day by themselves, or with someone else, occasionally, for plausibility's sake.

Surely the Browns and the Van Pelts suspected something. But not once had Charlie or Lucy been questioned about their social habits. It made some sense that Charlie's parents would trust him and understand that he was fast approaching adulthood, and would therefore leave him to his own devices, as they always had. But the Van Pelts were extraordinarily conservative – particularly Mrs. Van Pelt. Surely she could have been expected to grill Lucy on her doings on a regular basis.

Perhaps, thought Charlie, Carol Van Pelt had taken their relentless socializing as a sign that they were proceeding inexorably toward marriage, and therefore felt comfortable stepping back from the matter. It didn't sound like the Carol Van Pelt he knew, but it was the only way he could account for her behavior.

Charlie remained silent. He could have told his father what else he'd been lying about – part of him wanted to, very badly – but he didn't have the heart. He liked his father. He was a good man. Why hurt him? He was already terrified for his daughter; ruining his day would be an exercise in redundancy, and needlessly cruel. Perhaps in a few years they'd have a man to man talk about Charlie's Summer of Love.

All of these thought sped through Charlies mind in the time it took Lucy to lean down and whisper in Sally's ear “you're amazing, kid. Be as radical as you want to be.”

Sally seemed to be asleep, but she whispered back “Lucy...I think I like girls.”

 


	23. Chapter 23

Charlie laughed. “Seriously? Are you sure that's what she said?”

Lucy and Charlie sat on the Van Pelts' porch swing.

“Clear as a bell,” said Lucy. “I'm touched that she chose me to confide in.”

“My little sister, the radical lesbian feminist.” Charlie chuckled. “I love it.”

Hennepin Falls' middle and high schools were closed. After the previous week's events – the unmanageable overcrowding and Sally's attempt at insurrection – the town's school board had issued a statement. The statement read, in summary, “fuck it.”

The schools were closed until further notice, and the already rollicking festival of litigation over the issue reached a fever pitch. In addition to the town's new (and largely redundant) lawsuits against every entity associated with the Peaceful Acres development, and numerous new lawsuits against the Hennepin Falls school board by righteously angry residents of the development, the family of Lester Doocey, the young man who had tossed Sally into the dumpster, was suing the Brown family for Sally driving Lester to do it. Something about “mental anguish” and how they, the Dooceys were complete pricks (see section III, subsection a, pertaining to the natural behavior of pricks).

Charlie, Sally and Lucy were suddenly back to having a lot of free time on their hands.

However, their activities were now being carefully monitored – Charlie's and Sally's because they had shown themselves to be untrustworthy, Lucy's because the Van Pelts now knew that Charlie was not the guileless young man he seemed to be; and Lucy was implicated in the matter as well.

Like Allan Brown, the Van Pelts wondered what else Lucy had been lying about. What else she had been hiding.

The couple was on probation. No more dates – unless visits to one's or the other's house counted. Marcie's place was off limits. It had become clear that the girl had essentially no adult supervision, and suspicions about the couple's activities there were high.

Despite those suspicions, neither Charlie or Lucy were questioned directly about their activities at Marcie's house. Lucy assumed that neither her nor Charlie's parents thought they could handle the truth if their suspicions turned out to be well founded.

Good call, she thought. Charlie's parents could probably assimilate the facts given a little time, but hers – her mother in particular – would either kill her, drop dead themselves, or – best case scenario – kick her out of the house.

“How long do you think this is going to take to blow over?” asked Charlie.

“What, the school stuff or the 'we're in deep shit' stuff?” Lucy had thoughts on both, so she continued. “The school issue will get resolved when the parents from the new development get so sick of having their kids around all the time that they decide to become part of the solution – drop the lawsuits, drop the attitude, and start a fund for more seating or even those expansions that were supposed to be built. The original plans were for permanent structures that would cost like a couple hundred grand; even if every family here and there chipped in, I don't think they could come up anything like that much. But maybe there's a flimsier but less costly option. Tents, maybe?”

Charlie marveled at his girlfriend's intelligence and her analytical skills. He was so lucky to have her, it hardly mattered that his sex life was on indefinite hiatus. The girl was amazing.

“And the deep shit?” he asked.

Lucy was silent for a moment. She had a pretty good idea of what was coming; she just didn't like it. “I really don't see the shit getting any shallower until we turn 18 in April. Once we're legally adults, our parents don't get to have an opinion about where we go or who we see.”

Lucy gave the matter some more thought, and her expression darkened. “Well, I mean, our folks _can_ invoke the 'my house, my rules' principle. Yours will probably be reasonable about it, but mine won't drop it until I'm out from under their roof.”

“Ugh. Dammit, you're right.” admitted Charlie. “Still, once we're out of school, we can go anywhere, and as long as Marcie's involved, we'll have shelter, courtesy of her parents.”

Lucy shook her head, frowning. “I'm not sure I believe that. I certainly wouldn't count on it when we're making plans. I don't think Marcie gets her parents any more than they get _her_. And it's all a bit too deus ex machina, don't you think. It can't be that easy.”

Charlie was angry – the last thing he needed right now was for the light at the end of the tunnel to go dark. He had clung to the “Marcie's parents will save us” narrative for dear life, even before yesterday's debacle. Why would Lucy want to rain on her own parade?

Still, he couldn't find fault in her reasoning. He never could. Dammit.

Charlie sighed, then grasped at a straw. “What about Miri? Couldn't she help us out of this?”

Lucy laughed bitterly. “How? She has no money, she lives with her parents. She's smart but she's really damaged; she can barely hold herself together, much less hold a job.”

“But... okay, how about... what if we all just move in with Marcie to start with? It'll be a bit cramped...”

“A bit?” Lucy was incredulous. But she felt for Charlie. He was trying to cut through a Gordian knot with a teaspoon.

“Okay, a lot,” Charlie conceded. “But think about it: if her parents were going to object to us being there all the time, they would have done it already. If we were there full-time, they might not even notice the difference.”

“And if we're on our own, without parental support? It's all well and good to have shelter, but Marcie is suddenly going through four times as much food... believe me, they'll notice the difference.

“Look, there's really no point trying to work this all out ahead of time,” sad Lucy. “There are too many variables. I could get a Pell grant or a major scholarship, or if all else fails take out an inadvisably large student loan – enough to cover tuition _and_ expenses. My parents could turn out to be reasonable. You and Marcie could manage to line up jobs ahead of time wherever we're headed. Marcie _could_ be right about her parents. Your parents might be able to provide you _some_ sort of support. Brezhnev could drop the bomb tomorrow afternoon. We just have to wait and see how things play out.”

“I know,” said Charlie, “and I think it will all work out fine. But I can't stand waiting, not the way it is now. We hardly get any time together, there's no school fill up the rest of the time, we can't see Marcie or Miri – everything is on hold. I can take being bored. I can take being frustrated. I can take not getting laid.” He whispered the last two words in case one of Lucy's parents was eavesdropping. “I've spent most of my life doing all three of those things. But being in suspense the whole time? It's gonna kill me.”

Lucy smiled sympathetically. “You'll be fine. We'll be fine. When we're an old married couple, on the way to visit the grandkids in our flying car, we'll look back on this year and laugh at how impatient we were, and how long a year felt to us.”

Charlie imagined Lucy as an old lady. She wouldn't look a thing like her mother, wary and careworn from a life spent in vague fear of everything. She would be radiant. The same mischievous grin, the same intelligent, perpetually curious eyes. White haired and wrinkled, but more alive and vital than Charlie imagined her mother had ever been, even as a young girl. He wanted to be there for that.

He had to be.

He pictured himself in that scene, in that flying car making Jetsons noises: thinning gray hair, a bit more paunch, round face grown rounder, skin just beginning to become mottled and thin with age. And his own eyes – wiser. Tired perhaps, but alert. The old man in his vision was... content. He'd had a good life. Was _having_ a good life.

What would that old man look like after a life without Lucy? How much life would he have in him? How much would he have _left_ in him?

He knew the answer, and it terrified him. He very nearly blurted out a proposal then and there.

“So,” he said, attempting to calm down, and failing, “making wedding plans already?”

“Maybe. Scared?” asked Lucy. _Men,_ she thought.

 _Oh crap,_ thought Charlie. “No! Um... I mean...” _Deep breath. Don't blow this._ “I mean, no, not at all. In fact, care to set a date?”

Lucy's eyes widened. Quickly, she gathered herself and jokingly looked sharply behind her as if to say _who else is here – that remark couldn't have been meant for_ me. She turned to face Charlie again and stared pointedly into his eyes. “I'm sorry... you _do_ realize you just proposed, right?”

He had, hadn't he. “Huh. Yeah. I guess I did.”

Lucy's eyes were still trained on his, but she stared past them, into his mind. Charlie could feel her rooting around back there for a flashlight.

“Did you mean it?” she asked, finally.

Charlie grinned. If this was a test, he was going to ace it.

“Yes. Yes I did.”

For Charlie, who had lived most of his life in the medium of self-doubt, the moment was a revelation. He knew who he was – and realized, moreover, that he'd known all along. It had just taken Lucy and her flashlight to find and uncover that little cache of self-knowledge.

Lucy, herself grinning like both the cat that ate the canary and a proud mentor, kept her eyes locked on his.

“Ask me again, the right way.”

“Should I do the down on one knee thing.”

“What century is this? Just ask the question.”

Charlie took her hand in his and brought it to his lips to kiss. That broke up the staring contest, and Lucy's expression softened.

Charlie's gaze returned to Lucy, but now he saw her entire face. He saw the angry child, the teenage crush, the young lover, and the old woman in the flying car.

“Lucy Van Pelt,” he asked them, “will you marry me?”

 


	24. Chapter 24

Miri, now known by reputation to all the locals as Hennepin Falls' token commie pinko subversive and brain-washer of children, was doing her best to stay invisible.

After visiting Sally in the hospital, she had, under cover of night, driven her VW Beetle straight home to her parents' Pine Ridge split-level. But after less than a week spent communicating with Marcie only by phone, she gave in to her need for tactile contact and – again under cover of night – drove back to Marcie's, hair and body unadorned, with a suitcase full of conservative clothes in the backseat of her parents' station wagon.

The plan was to race up the stairs to Marcie's room with her suitcase, close the door behind her, and not emerge until after Marcie graduated high school.

Miri need not have been quite so paranoid. Other than the Browns and the Van Pelts, no one In town would recognize her on sight. So long as she didn't let her freak flag fly, no townie would know her from any of the dozens of ex-New Yorkers who wandered through Hennepin Falls on a daily basis, condescendingly amused by the small town ambiance.

Marcie's parents soon noted that their home now had a new full-time resident, but said nothing, just as they'd said nothing about any moans of pleasure they might have heard emanating from their daughter's room over the summer – moans that still occurred now, despite the absence of any male visitor. Marcie couldn't decide whether her parents were deaf, clueless, or more tolerant and progressive than she would have otherwise believed.

Her parents were, obviously, not hard of hearing, nor was the house well insulated acoustically. And they knew what sex sounded like. And if their daughter was a lesbian, well, it was one thing about her they could actually comprehend, something there was a word for. It certainly wasn't worth a trip up to that mind-mangling room to confront her over it.

As much as they loved her – and they did, deeply and profoundly – Marcie's parents were also terrified of her. Her thoughts had their own inscrutable, sideways logic, and she expressed them in a manner that sometimes made the English language sound like some sort of cipher.

She was an agent of chaos and, to them, chaos was unbearable.

They provided for her day to day needs, saw to it that she received the special education she required and otherwise let her raise herself, and loved her from afar.

Once she was convinced that there would be no parental interference with her new living situation (or, as she described it, paraphrasing Han Solo, “no Imperial entanglements”), Marcie was in heaven. With school closed until further notice, there was nothing limiting or interfering with her time with Miri.

And Miri needed the attention. She had been shaken to the core by Sally's brush with martyrdom and the fallout from it. To begin with, the girl could have easily been killed by her fall into the dumpster – she could have broken her neck instead of dislocating her shoulder – and the specter of the deaths of Danny and Damien, however profoundly different their circumstances from Sally's, haunted her dreams. Most nights, Marcie would be awakened by Miri's sobs, and sometimes her screams.

There was nothing for it; if Sally had died, Miri would have been partially responsible. So whereas she could know intellectually that she had no part in her brother's and her friend's deaths, there was no escaping her role in inspiring Sally's foolish behavior. And the fact that Sally had lived through the experience did nothing to assuage Miri's sense of guilt.

And if her guilt over Sally haunted her nights, daylight offered no relief: she had barricaded herself in her girlfriend's home because she had become a pariah over the incident.

After Danny's and Damien's deaths, everyone around Miri had devoted themselves to helping her recover from the traumas. Every adult who had any contact with her held the singular objective of helping her to heal.

Now there was an entire town full of people who hated her not only for what she had done, but for who she was at her core. Every quality she possessed that she had considered a virtue was seen by the people of Hennepin Falls as sin. If they became aware of her sexuality and her living arrangements, she imagined, they'd drag her from her new home and burn her at the stake.

Marcie would have done anything to relieve her girlfriend's agony, but she had to admit that being put in the position of caretaker had been good for her. It brought her out of herself in ways the summer's voyage of self-discovery had not. She couldn't spend nearly as much time wandering aimlessly through her own psyche; she had a job to do – one she turned out to be surprisingly good at.

She was Miri's therapist.

She'd retained a lot of what she'd observed from watching Lucy work – the techniques and mindset necessary to walk someone through a minefield of self-doubt, self-recrimination, and grief. It helped that Miri was an experienced patient, an old pro at describing her own symptoms. This was not the group therapy Lucy had led for them. This was one on one, a dialogue.

There was also an element of sex therapy, which was as cathartic for Marcie as for Miri. Physician, heal thyself.

After one such session, Marcie and Miri sat eating crackers in bed (by tacit agreement, neither kicked the other out for the infraction). “Man,” lamented Miri, “I miss those two.” She did not need to specify which two. “This is great, but it's just not the same around here without them.”

“Yeah,” Marcie agreed. “I wonder what's up with them. They must have gotten in big trouble.”

Marcie mulled over the possible consequences of telling Miri something that had been on her mind for a while. What, she finally decided, the hell. “You know, I think Charlie has a big crush on you.”

“I know,” said Miri. “He's totally into you, too. When we see them again, do you think we should act on it? Give him a thrill?”

Marcie hadn't even considered the possibility that Charlie might be attracted to her. Because she was exclusively into girls, a genuine Kinsey 6 or close to it, the act was unthinkable. Charlie was a sweetheart and, as she had observed a number of times, a generous and caring lover; but she'd have rather had a root canal.

On the other hand, she knew her girlfriend was (just barely) bi-, and though she experienced a momentary twinge of jealousy at the idea, she concluded that it wasn't fair to expect Miri to completely deny that aspect of her orientation. Also, the image of Miri with Charlie inspired another twinge, in a different part of her. The thought was too hot to pass up.

“Well,” she said, “it's fine with me if you indulge, and I doubt Lucy would object. But I just can't participate. I've come to terms with seeing a guy's dick in person, but that's the only interaction I ever want to have with one.”

Miri chuckled. “Fair enough.”

Marcie looked down and to the side, which was where her sexual thoughts lived.

Scientific concepts hovered three feet above her, and her social insecurities inhabited the inside of her left eyelid. She recalled historical and political facts by physically grasping them at them with her hands; they were located a few inches to the side of her hips – politics on the left, naturally, and history on the right. Names resided about half a mile behind her skull, but could generally be summoned with a click or two of the tongue. Rules of etiquette responded to a sniff or a rapid series of blinks.

It all made perfect sense to her, but others experienced some difficulty adjusting to her ticks.

Miri hadn't memorized Marcie's lexicon of thought gestures in it's entirety, but she knew the young woman was currently lost in contemplation of matters erotic.

Eventually Marcie looked up, wearing a goofy grin, and said “I wonder if I could talk Lucy into a trade.”

Miri was skeptical. “Do you think she'd go all the way with you? She's open-minded, but she's really not into girls.”

That was Marcie's understanding as well. But she'd been half joking about converting Lucy for months, and Lucy had been a good sport about it. Maybe she wasn't quite as straight as she thought she was. And certainly, she wouldn't be offended or threatened if Marcie made a Hail Mary pass.

Miri knew exactly what Marcie was thinking, and the thought aroused her more than she would have expected. She noticed that Marcie's pupils were dilated.

They let nature take its course.

 


	25. Sally (another interlude)

After a week spent in the hospital, Sally returned home where she was, of necessity, confined to her room for some time. Her parents brought her the small TV from the den and perched it on top of her dresser, and Charlie loaned her his cassette deck and a pile of tapes. She didn't like any of the music Charlie listened to, but she appreciated the thought.

Sally was immensely frustrated to be stuck inside when she could have been out in the community, basking in the glow of her notoriety.

What a waste of a break from school, she thought.

She spent much of her time with the TV off, staring at the ceiling and sorting through the glorious wreckage of her life. Her act of subversion had been a triumph. Even the ape that tossed her in the dumpster deserved some credit, she thought – it was good showbiz, and there was great value in being seen as a martyr.

Frequently, her thoughts would come back to the chubby girl she'd knocked over to get her seat. She hoped that somehow, once the show began, the girl understood why she'd needed that particular seat so badly.

Sally wanted to apologize. To hug her and comfort her and try to make it better. Maybe give her a kiss...

And there it was. She recalled dreaming that she'd told Lucy she liked girls. But had she actually been dreaming, come to think of it? And was the dream just random, as she had thought, or had she been admitting something she wasn't ready to deal with consciously, despite her stated aspirations to lesbianhood.

It was becoming clear that she had gotten her wish, for when she imagined that kiss once again, she felt a thrill of arousal.

 _Holy shit – I_ am _a lesbian! I've got to tell Miri._

She thought about the girl some more, and how nice it would be to take off her shirt and kiss her cute belly.

The combination of arousal and a specific fantasy object was a new one for Sally, and the intensity of the experience surprised her. She did what came naturally, and with very little build-up climaxed powerfully.

She yelled, in shock as much as ecstasy.

Her mother ran in, alarmed. “Honey, are you okay? What happened?”

Sally did her best to cease her panting and still her body, still in the throes of aftershocks. “I moved the wrong way again,' She said, “irritated the ribs. Can I have some aspirin?”

“Of course, honey.” Her mom brought her two pills and a glass of water. Sally smiled sweetly at her, a little girl's adoring smile. “Thanks.”

Her mother returned the smile. “Okay, get some rest, dear.”

“Yeah,” agreed Sally, winking. “I gotta lay off all the jogging and calisthenics.”

Her mother chuckled, and gazed at her for just an extra moment before she left.

 _Fuck_ , thought Sally. _She knows._

 


	26. Chapter 26

Charlie toyed with his spaghetti and meatballs. He was hungry, but in no mood to eat.

Family dinners had become very tense affairs since Sally's escapade. Sally was grounded until further notice, and Charlie and Lucy were both forbidden to see Marcie under any circumstances. A month after that disastrous first day, the schools were still closed. There was nothing to do.

Most days, Lucy visited Charlie at home. They were not allowed out of earshot of one set of parents or the other, and as the Browns were not psychotically religious, Charlie's place was less anxiety provoking to spend time at.

Sally, on the other hand, had no social outlet. Her only friend was Miri, who was under an unwritten restraining order.

Charlie and Sally glared at their parents over their dinner plates. Allan Brown would occasionally speak to his wife about his day at work, but even those conversations were perfunctory – breaking the silence only threw the underlying tension into sharp relief. The Browns were now a – what was that word? - dysfunctional family.

Charlie had had about enough of the whole business. “Look, this is ridiculous. It's been a month. How long am I going to be under house arrest? Until I'm 18? Or until I move out – because I can make that happen sooner, you know. I can walk out that door and over to Marcie's and have a roof over my head.”

Allan Brown was angry, but honestly relieved at the break in his son's silence. “Oh, really? You're going to run away? You haven't threatened to do that since you were ten. Not very mature, Charlie.”

There was so much Charlie wanted to say. “I'm a lot more mature than you think,” he growled. “In fact, you have no idea.”

“So, you think your mom and I are idiots?” asked Allan. Charlie was taken aback – he'd never seen his father this agitated.

“Calm down, dear,” Carol Brown urged her husband.

“Not now, Carol.” Allan turned back to Charlie. “You think we don't know what was going on up there?”  
  
“I think you think you do, but you don't know the half of it.”

Sally and her mother locked eyes across the table. The two sweetest, gentlest men they knew standing, leaning in aggressively across the dining room table, practically at each other's throats.

Like clockwork, Sally and Carol each stood and moved to the right. Carol placed her hands on Allan's shoulders. Sally took her brother's left hand. But both men broke away. Charlie headed for the door, his father close behind.

Allan Brown was frantic. He was losing control of the situation. “Where the hell do you think you're going?”

“To Marcie's. And I'm picking up Lucy on the way,” he added, to his own surprise. He hadn't discussed anything of the sort with Lucy, and wasn't sure how he'd pull it off; but he was committed now, he discovered.

“But before I go, let me tell you what really went on at Marcie's place, just so you'll know.”

“Oh, we know,” snarled Allan, “you and Lucy were having sex. You think that was so hard to figure out?”

“And what's wrong with that?”

“You know very well what's wrong with that. It's immoral, and irresponsible. You're not even engaged.”

Charlie smiled – sincerely, without malice. “Actually, we are. I proposed weeks ago. We haven't set a date or anything. But we _are_ getting married.”

Carol Brown couldn't help herself “Oh, Charlie, that's wonderful!”

“Quiet, Carol,” Allan snapped. “That doesn't change anything, Charlie. You shouldn't have sex until you're married, you know that.”

Charlie laughed quietly and shook his head. “Dad, do you have any idea what year this is. I'll give you a clue: it's not 1953.”

“Yes,” agreed Allan, “and the world's become a cesspool since then.”

“No,” said Charlie, “the world has opened up. We're more free than we've ever been. How is that not a good thing?”

Charlie braced himself. He was going to end the argument with a knockout punch, and he would hate himself for it. But there was no turning back now.

“Do you want to know what really went on at Marcie's. Fine. Every day this summer, Lucy and I would meet there and fuck each other's brains out. Sometimes, Marcie and her girlfriend would watch, and sometimes we'd watch them...”

“Girlfriend?!” Carol Brown turned white.

“Yes. Miri is Marcie's girlfriend.”

“Sweet Jesus,” breathed Allan Brown. He crumpled into his lounge chair.

Charlie went on. “We would all spend most of the day naked around each other, even when we were just talking. Also, I kind of get the feeling that Miri is a little attracted to me as well, and if she is, she and I may have sex, and everyone would be fine with that, because we don't believe in monogamy. It's all very friendly and cozy and sweet and it makes us very happy and I don't see what's wrong with any of it.

“You say it's immoral, I say it's far more moral than your way of life, which represses people's natural sexuality, makes pariahs of homosexuals, and makes a nightmare out of the completely natural process of developing as a sexual being.”

Allan Brown's face was now as white as his wife's. Charlie's heart ached for him. He was a good man – from another time.

“Look, dad, I love you, I truly do, and I respect you. But I live in a different world, and it suits me the way yours does you. You may not think so at the moment, but you raised me well, and I'm grateful, and I think I turned out pretty good.”

He took a deep breath. “I'm going now, unless you really think there's any point in trying to stop me.”

Allan Brown said nothing.

Charlie opened the door and stepped out. He paused for a moment, then stuck his head back in. “By the way,” he said, “Sally's a lesbian.”

Without waiting for a reaction, he closed the door, turned, and wept all the way to Lucy's house – where he found her sitting on the porch swing with a suitcase at her feet.

_Oh boy._

Lucy's expression was unfathomable. She had clearly been crying, but was not at the moment. Whatever emotion she had settled on, it was bad news for Charlie.

Charlie's heart pounded. It should have occurred to him that his parents would call the Van Pelts as soon as they'd recovered from the shock of his grand exit, and that the consequences for Lucy would be disastrous. But this was worse than he would have expected – she'd clearly been kicked out of her own home.

He sat down at her feet. He couldn't look up. Couldn't speak. Finally, he croaked “Lucy, I'm so sorry. I didn't think...”

“No, you didn't, did you?” she spat. “Do you have any idea what you've done? They gave me five minutes to pack up. I have a few changes of clothes, but that's it. And I can't go back in, ever.”

“Lucy, I... I'm so...”

“He hit her!” Lucy wept. “Mom tried to convince dad not to kick me out, and he hit her – he's never done that before. And he almost hit _me_. He pulled his arm back like he was going to slap me into next month, but he stopped himself.” She caught her breath, ceased weeping, and glared at Charlie. “There's never been violence in this house. Never. Not even spankings.”

“Lucy, please...”

“Linus pulled his old security blanket out of the closet and ran into his room with it. He's probably lying in there sucking his thumb right now. What the hell have you done? What are we going to do?”

“I didn't think any of this would happen. I thought I was only screwing up my own life.” Charlie stood. “Look, if you never want to see me again, I understand,” he said.

Lucy laughed bitterly. “Jesus, you're really into burning bridges today, aren't you?”

Charlie hung his head.

“Look, just sit down, okay?” Lucy patted the space next to her on the porch swing. Charlie obeyed.

“Alright,” said Lucy. “Look, we'll get through this, we'll just...”

The front door opened and Lucy's father stepped out. Charlie had never seen a man so miserable. Anger, fear, hatred, anguish, grief, regret... all flashed across his face randomly. Charlie had a moment of hope that Mr. Van Pelt had changed his mind, and had come outside to forgive Lucy for her transgressions.

Instead, the man snarled “you still here?” And then his expression settled on grief. It was clearly taking all of his willpower not to collapse into tears.

“We were just leaving,” said Lucy, coldly.

And with that, Lucy stood, grabbed her suitcase, and stepped past her father onto the porch steps. Charlie followed. Mr. Van Pelt did not wait to watch them go. He slammed the door behind him.

As Charlie and Lucy approached the sidewalk, they heard the sound of her father banging his head against the front door, and her mother begging him to stop.

When they had put a few hundred feet behind them, Lucy dropped her suitcase and collapsed in Charlie's arms, sobbing.

“I'll make this up to you,” Charlie murmured. “I swear I'll make it up to you.”

 


	27. Chapter 27

Spent, defeated after Charlie's leave-taking, the Browns relented on Sally's grounding. She was free to roam the town as she pleased now. In fact, the less they saw of her, the better. She had been outed as an alien creature – one of a type that was clearly over-running their once quaint, innocent little town. They had nothing to say to her.

They had, they believed, failed as parents – failed spectacularly. Their son was living in sin, cohabitating with his wanton girlfriend and two perverted women; and their daughter was the same type of pervert.

It hurt all the more because they still loved their children, loved them to distraction; and they knew that their children loved them as well. But somehow, all of that love, all of that time spend guiding them, reading to them, singing them to sleep, holding those sweet children to them against horrors, dangers and corruption of the greater world hadn't been enough. Whose fault was it? It couldn't be anyone's but theirs.

They loved, with all their broken hearts, two abominations.

How was it that song went? “ _Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command.”_ Perhaps they should have listened closer to songs and sayings of the younger generation.

Allan had heard another song once. He hadn't liked it, but he remembered it now, clear as day: _“...and these children that you spit on, as they try to change their world, are immune to your consultations; they're quite aware of what they're going through.”_

Changes. Change, thought Allan. That was the enemy. Why did so much have to change, and so quickly? The world of his youth had not been perfect – unlike many of his generation, Allan Brown had supported the civil rights movement, had always believed that the treatment of blacks and other minorities in his country was reprehensible. The members of his union were diverse, and he fought for all of them, saw all of them, regardless of color or creed, as equals. Some change was good.

But it was the great tragedy of his time that advances in social justice had brought with them, on their coattails, a deterioration of morals. Equality for all races was one thing. Tolerance for all manner of libertines and perverts and traitors – that was another thing entirely. He had shielded, he thought, his daughter from those corrupting influences, and yet she had turned out... he could hardly think it.

It was that Miri person, that commie homo dissident. She was the one who had corrupted Sally. Surely she had told her that her personal proclivities were perfectly acceptable. Had she and Sally...? No, he dared not complete the thought. His precious baby.

He wished he were a less moral man – immoral enough to seek out and kill that woman, preferably with his bare hands. But this thought, too, he shied away from. It was a satisfying fantasy, but he was not capable of such violence. Allan Brown would literally not hurt a fly – he would capture them and release them outside. He drew the line at roaches, but stomping on them made him queasy. He was a calm, even-tempered, non-violent man.

Roger Van Pelt had always been even-tempered himself, but then, he had always been in control. The undisputed master of his household, the final word in all matters and disputes, Roger was a sweet, gentle individual as long as he got his way. And as his authority had never, until just recently, been challenged, he had never, until just recently, so much as raised his voice at a family member.

Now here he was, begging his wife’s forgiveness for striking her the previous evening, experiencing chills and shakes at the thought that he had almost struck his own beloved daughter moments later, and inchoate with rage that Lucy had managed to betray every value he’d spent nearly two decades instilling in her.

His wife wouldn’t speak to him, his son was locked in his bedroom with the absurd security blanket he’d taken until age 12 to abandon, and Lucy was off fornicating with that Brown boy.

Charlie Brown. When Lucy began dating him, Roger Van Pelt had approved instantly. The boy was a milquetoast –  nice enough, but dull to the core. He was the last boy who would get Lucy into any trouble.

But clearly, he’d been utterly wrong about that. Another loss of control, another surge of rage.

He sat still on the sofa, a thousand mile stare frozen on his face. But in his mind, he paced the room, wearing a groove in the carpet. What to do next. How to handle this intolerable situation.

How to calm down enough to do so rationally. All of his plots and plans were tinged with anger and violence. He could stalk down to that sick lesbian’s house and drag Lucy back home… and then what? Beat her? How could he even think it? What was that image doing in his head? And he’d kicked her out, hadn’t he. Did he really want to give in on that matter?

Maybe he should save the beating for Charlie Brown. The boy had corrupted her, Roger was sure of that.

Wait, beat him up? Where were these thoughts coming from?

He was disgusted with himself, disgusted with the world. And terrified of what he might do.

He said a quick Hail Mary and ran out to the car. He needed answers, and there was only one place to find them. He drove to church. He’d confess his sins, and pray until his head was clear.

The route to the church took him past the perverted girl’s home. God forgive him, he prayed, for the brutal urges that passed through his mind.


	28. Chapter 28

Marcie’s room was silent and in disarray. When Charlie and Lucy had descended (or rather ascended, the room being on the second floor) on Marcie and Miri’s hideout and explained their dilemma, the joy of the reunion soon gave way to practical concerns. Was is really feasible for all four of them to occupy the same space day and night? How soon would Marcie’s parents figure out what was going on, and would they tolerate it?

How would they all eat? Would Miri’s allowance buy enough food to supplement Marcie’s supplies?

Would Lucy’s or Charlie’s parents intervene and drag them out of their clubhouse to face unknown consequences? Would they get the law involved? If so, would Miri’s pot supplies and paraphernalia get them all arrested? Would one of the aggrieved parties go after Miri for contributing to the corruption of a minor (which could be prosecuted based on the pot or her relationship with Marcie or both)?

What, basically, were they going to do next? What did they dare do?

And if staying there wasn’t going to work. Where would they go?

Miri lay on the bed next to Marcie, who was in one of her fugue states. She was probably assessing the situation and their options the way a chess master might play 6 simultaneous games. But she might also be frozen, a gear in her brain stuck out of place. It could be hours before she returned from wherever she went on such occasions.

Lucy sat at Marcie’s desk, head in her hands, fighting off a migraine. Despite the agonizing headache, she was trying to think her way out of the situation; but she wasn’t making much progress.

Charlie lay on the floor with headphones on, listening to the album “Relayer,” by the progressive rock group Yes. It wasn’t his kind of thing at all, but he thought the loudness, the complexity and the alien nature of the music might get his brain working. Results so far were not promising.

The previous night had been hot and humid, and they’d all slept fitfully. This morning, torrential rain had broken the heat, and Marcie’s attic was as comfortable as is ever was, even without air conditioning. The sound of the AC unit being absent, the only sound in the room was the tinny music spilling from Charlie’s headphones.

But even that was enough to exacerbate Lucy’s migraine. She stood up from the desk and made her way to the record player. She yanked the tone arm off of the spinning disk, sending a horrendous shriek through Charlie’s headphones. Charlie sat straight up.

“Gaaah,” he complained. “What’s your fucking problem?”

Lucy, in too much pain to even speak, made a drilling gesture at her ear and grabbed her head with both hands. It took Charlie a few seconds, but he got the point.

The vivid sound of the needle scratching across the record did have the additional effect of rousing Marcie from her fugue.

“Hey,” she said “You’re going to ruin that needle – and the record.”

“Sorry,” said Lucy, her jaw hurting from the movement.

“Hey, kid,” said Miri, stroking Marcie’s hair, “what’s it like in there? Come up with any genius insights?”

Marcie sighed, and her shoulders slumped. “Nope. All I got is ‘wait and see what happens.’”

“Look,” said Lucy, wincing, “maybe you should just go down there and talk with your folks. Tell them what’s going on, see if they give you permission to have us all here. It’s better than waiting and wondering.” Lucy rubbed her temples.

“And if they say no?” asked Marcie.

No one spoke.

“Yeah, exactly,” she continued. “Let’s stick with waiting and wondering.”

They waited.

Just as Lucy’s headache began to abate, the jarring sound of Marcie’s telephone ringing hit her ears like an icepick. Lucy whimpered.

Marcie, knowing that every subsequent ring would add to Lucy’s agony, leapt for her phone.

“Hello… Yes, he is. It’s for you,” she told Charlie. “It’s Sally.”

_Oh, boy._

Completely focused on his own problems, Charlie had forgotten that he’d outed Sally on his way out the door the previous night.

This was not going to be pleasant. Arguing with Sally under any circumstances was like trying to negotiate with a swarm of bees. The best he could hope for in this situation was to die with dignity.

“Um… Hi, Sally, I…”

“You son of a bitch! What the fuck were you thinking? It’s bad enough you told them all that stuff you do over there, but why did you have to screw _me_ over in the process?”

That was a good question. What was a good answer? Hmm… Yes, that would work, and it was even true, to boot. “Sally, our parents need to know that they love a lesbian; that gay people aren’t alien creatures – they’re their friends and family.”

“They do not need to know that! Not from you, not about _me_ – I mean, I’d just figured it out myself.“

“Well, um, good for you.”

“Thanks. Thank you very much, you fucking twat.” Charlie was impressed. His 9th grader sister was cursing at a college sophomore level. “By the way, asswipe, how did you even know?”

“Um, you told Lucy when you were under sedation at the hospital.”

“Oh, so that _did_ happen. You know, it was supposed to be a secret, fuckwad. Oh, and tell Lucy she’s also a fuckwad.” Where had she picked up all of these words?

“I’ll be sure to mention it when...”

“I’d say she was a cunt, but she’s not the one who blabbed to our parents.”

“Fair enough. Okay, calm down, alright?”

“Okay, dickface, I’ll calm down.” There was a pause. “So, do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“Yes, actually. I, um…” Charlie braced himself for another attack. “I kinda need a favor.”

There was a dangerous silence.

“A favor?” asked Sally, calmly.

“Yes,” said Charlie. “I need…”

“You want _another_ favor?”

“’Another’?”

“Yeah, you’re still breathing. Don’t get greedy.”

Charlie sighed. “I get it. And I really am sorry. Really. I wasn’t _trying_ to ruin your life – you know that, right? If I’d thought it through… well, none of this would be going on right now. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” said Sally. “I know. I guess it’s kind of funny. Mom and dad actually jump whenever I look at them. Like I said ‘boo’ or something.”

“That’s not funny at all,” said Charlie. “I think that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Yeah, well, that, too,” agreed Sally. “So what can I do for you?”

“I need clothes and stuff,” said Charlie, relieved that he’d reached a truce with his sister. “Basically, I need you to pack a suitcase for me and bring it here.”

“Oh, sure, no problem,” said Sally, brightly. “Just give me a few months for my ribs and shoulder to finish healing and I’ll bring it right over.”

“Oh,” said Charlie. “Right.” Sally was in no condition to carry or drag a heavy suitcase across town. It was honestly a bit much to ask even if she hadn’t suffered her injuries.

“OK, how about… just gather up the stuff. Tomorrow, when dad’s at work, I’ll come by for the suitcase myself.”

“Alright. I’ll do it. On one condition.”

Charlie’s heart sank. Sally would not be easy to appease under the circumstances. “What’s that?”

“Let me come with you. I can’t live here anymore – thanks to you.”

Charlie was actually relieved. She was asking the impossible – much easier to negotiate away. “Sally, we’re four people in one room as it is. Also, mom and dad wouldn’t be as restrained as they’ve been with me. I’m almost an adult, and Lucy and I are engaged. You’re 15, and you’d be living with the woman that corrupted you. Not just politically – they probably think she seduced you.”

“No, I was able to talk them down from that. I told them that all I’d done so far was masturbate about women. That shut them up.”

Charlie couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, I’ll bet.”

Sally sighed. “Fine, I’ll pack up your stuff, on the house.”

“Thanks.”

“But I get to come visit – I’m not grounded anymore; they’re too scared of me to discipline me at this point.”

Charlie shook his head, sadly. “Sure. A visit would be nice. I’ll make sure everyone’s dressed before you come by.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” said Sally, quickly. _Right,_ thought Charlie. After hearing him describe life at Marcie’s, Sally was probably looking forward to hanging out with three nude women.

“Okay. See you tomorrow. And thanks.”

“No, seriously, I can totally handle nudity. As long as _you_ cover _your_ junk up, we’ll be fine.”


	29. Chapter 29

After weeks of ineffectual lawsuits and fruitless negotiations, the Putnam County school board arrived at a solution to Hennepin Falls’ overcrowding problem – they would bus the majority of Peaceful Acres’ 7th through 12th grade students to schools elsewhere in the county.

The irony of this was not lost on the parents of Peaceful Acres. Bussing had been one of the indignities they had moved upstate to avoid. But considering that – and few of them would say this out loud - the new schools their children would be attending were majority white, and there would be no ghetto kids arriving in exchange, they welcomed the arrangement. And dealing with their children whining over having to wake up an hour early was preferable to having them around full-time.

As Coolidge Middle School and Hennepin High opened their doors on October 2, little had changed in the living arrangements at Marcie’s house. The Browns and the Van Pelts had resigned themselves to their older children’s absence, and made no attempt to disrupt their new lives.

Sally, now free to come and, especially, go as she pleased, was a daily guest in Marcie’s crowded bedroom. This imposed certain limits on the residents’ daytime activities – to Sally’s disappointment, the women remained fully clothed around her at all times, and she was never invited to smoke Miri’s pot. And of course the couples’ sexual activities were significantly curtailed.

But it was worth it to watch Sally’s mind expand as she participated in their deep, far-ranging conversations. Miri’s account of her life – her institutionalization, her friend Damien’s suicide, her year at Earth People’s Park; details she had never shared with her protégé – left Sally devastated, and with an even greater sense of respect for her mentor. Lucy, who had never made much of an impression on Sally one way or the other, described her journey of self-discovery, and how it had led her to Charlie. Charlie offered no narrative, but listening to him discuss ideas as abstract as the nature of consciousness and as practical as the politics of the day astonished her. She had always thought him a good-natured dullard.

Marcie she had a great deal of difficulty following. The girl’s thoughts collided and ricocheted off of each other on weird tangents. Sally could tell that Marcie was very smart, but could not parse her speech when she was conceptualizing on the fly.

As surreal as the previous month had been for Sally, it did not prepare her for the experience of her first day back at school. Not only was she a famous and controversial figure after her stunt the previous month, but somehow news of her sexuality had gotten around.

As she walked through the halls to her homeroom, all eyes seemed to be on her. Some regarded her with awe, but most with derision or disgust. There were snickers and suppressed laughter; worse, there were insults and epithets. She repeatedly heard, but could not locate the sources of “dyke,” “homo,” and “lesbo.”

More frightening was the one young lad who blocked her path, looked her in the eye and snarled “you fucking commie pervert. You better watch your back. We’re coming for you, and you’re gonna find out what it’s like to take dick, like it or not.”

Sally froze. As the boy, who she recognized as one of her would-be attackers from the auditorium, stalked off, she could not figure out how to react to the fact that she’d just been threatened with gang rape.

She felt a gentle hand on her shoulder and jumped. She turned to face a small young man wearing a yarmulke and a chagrined expression.

“Oh, jeez. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have startled you like that after… I- I just wanted to tell you that some of us here really appreciate you, and we’re on your side, and if that gorilla and his friends try to attack you, they’ll have to go through us.”

Sally managed an uneven smile. If this boy was typical of her protectors, they didn’t stand a chance. But it was a sweet, even noble sentiment.

The boy had spoken with what she recognized as a Brooklyn accent. He must have been one the Peaceful Acres kids who had escaped bussing. She also recognized a new expression on his face. It was a mixture of awe and passion. The kid had a crush on her. The thought pleased her. Though he wasn’t what she considered attractive, she was tempted to mention that she was actually bi-; but it seemed an impossible segue.

“I- I’m David, by the way,” he stammered, “David Goldberg.” He visibly gathered himself. “I was there when you did your protest. It was amazing. I’d love to talk to you about it some time.”

There was a piercing noise, like an alarm clock through a 50 amp amplifier. They were now late for homeroom.

“Can I meet you in the cafeteria for lunch? I… I have some ideas.”

_Ideas? Ideas about what?_

Still a bit dazed, Sally replied “Um, sure. That would be… fine. Sure. Lunch.”

“Great! See you then!” As he rushed off to his homeroom, David turned and yelled to her “you’re awesome!”

Sally, still in a state of shock, willed herself to move. As she forced herself to take each step toward her homeroom, her mind spun off its axis. I’m going to get gang-raped. Unless a cadre of nerds manages to fight off a platoon of angry jocks. _‘You’re gonna find out what it’s like to take dick._ David had a crush on her. _That’s dick I wouldn’t mind taking_. She cringed, not at the thought, but at its juxtaposition with the threat. _Should I tell him I’m actually bi-? Should I tell a teacher or a counselor about the threat? Should I tell the police?_ She didn’t know the thug’s name. Without that information, what could they do?

It was going to be a long day.

 

 

News of Lucy and Charlie’s situation had also spread though the town.

As they entered Hennepin High, all eyes were on them, as they had been on Sally, but those eyes were filled with awe and envy. Here were two high schoolers, living together away from their parents’ homes, in what was reportedly a hippie love nest – lascivious stories of which had been fabricated, spread and embellished upon.

Sure, the two students in question were total nerds… but were they really? Those who watched them as they passed through the halls now saw not a plump bookworm and a pathetic mediocrity, but a couple with an air of confidence and, somewhat infuriatingly, superiority. They had not merely risen from their places at the bottom of the student social ladder; they had transcended the ladder entirely.

They separated with a kiss to head to their respective homerooms. On the way, Lucy heard a few girls whisper “slut” to their friends. More bold was her cheerleader nemesis. As Lucy passed her, she expected to her the girl’s usual taunt of “fatty,” but instead the young woman greeted her with *cough* “slut” *cough*.

Lucy stopped to glare at the girl, and immediately felt sorry for her. She possessed none of her usual stupid, oblivious confidence. She was clearly shaken; diminished somehow.

Lucy smiled warmly at her, and shrugged. Some other time, she decided, she would approach the girl, perhaps befriend her. There was clearly something going on with her beyond feeling defeated by Lucy’s new social status. She’d been hurt, and Lucy believed in helping those in pain.

The girl managed a wan smile in return. Lucy nodded, and continued on her way.

Charlie received no such taunts. In accordance with the eternal double standard, girls who had sex were sluts, but boys who got laid were heroes. Friends, strangers, even former bullies and enemies approached him, patted him on his shoulder, and congratulated him. Some asked for juicy details, but Charlie would not satisfy their curiosity. Many asked him if one or another story about his love nest – all of them completely fictional, of course – was true. He knew he should have refuted them, but it was more fun to say, simply, “no comment.”

Though his celebrity status was proving to be something of a distraction, he found her was able to focus quite well on his classwork. He sat in the front row of all his classes. He raised his hand frequently to answer questions. He was even so bold as to argue with his teacher when his textbook contained outright lies about American history or glossed over atrocities committed by settlers against Native Americans.

Eventually, their fellow students adjusted to Charlie and Lucy’s presence, and by the end of the day, they were being neither scrutinized nor whispered about. _Teenagers today_ , they thought. _Such short attention spans._

Sally had no such luck. As a pervert and a dissident, she was a clear and present danger to every decent person in town, and might commit an act of subversion, or try to feel up some girl, at any moment. In addition, word of her encounter with the thug – whose name she now knew to be Jack McDougal – had spread, and many were wondering, with sick fascination, when her assailants would strike, and how much they would get away with.

When lunchtime arrived, Sally hurried to the cafeteria. She was eager to talk with David, who was the only sympathetic individual she’d encountered that day.

When she arrived, it took her a moment to spot David, who was seated at a small table in a dark corner of the room. _Good call_ , she thought. _Best to be inconspicuous_.

Their eyes met, but by tacit agreement, neither waved at the other. The gesture would only attract attention.

Sally joined him at the table. He did his best to not gaze longingly at her, but failed. _He’s got it bad_ , thought Sally. She smiled sweetly at him as she sat down. She retrieved her bagged lunch from her backpack – David was already working on his – and set the foil-wrapped contents down on the table in front of her. An egg salad sandwich, carrot sticks, and a large serving of Cocoa Puffs. She undid the foil on the latter partially, to form a bowl. She placed the rest of the contents of the bag – a small carton of milk and a spoon – next to the improvised bowl. David found her cereal arrangements amusing and charming.

He gazed adoringly at her. Her knew he should be speaking, not staring, but could remember none of the words he had planned in advance to say to her to break the ice.

Sally poured the milk on her cereal and downed a spoonful.

“So,” she said.

“So,” he replied. _Say something, you idiot_ , he chided himself, but no words came to mind.

Sally swallowed another spoonful of cereal and asked “so you have some ideas – about what?”

Finally, David’s mind had something to grab onto. “I was thinking about other kinds of protests, and maybe starting an organization of some kind. There’s strength and safety in numbers, you know?”

“Oh, man,” Sally sighed, “I think my protesting days are over. The first one nearly got me killed, and all it achieved was to make me public enemy number one.”

David, clearly disappointed, but sympathetic, said “I hear you.”

“I was kind of hoping you had some ideas about how to protect me from Jack McDougal and his buddies,” said Sally.

“Well,” said David, “if you know his name, you should definitely talk to the principal or someone. Get him suspended or even expelled.”

“That’s all well and good – if they believe me. But it’s not just him; it’s his friends, too. And they’re not likely to attack me at school, anyway. They’re going to follow me and pounce on me somewhere else.”

“Damn,” said David. “You’re right. You’ve got to tell the police.” He thought for a moment. “Actually, you should tell everybody – every adult you know, anyway; your parents, their friends… everyone in town.”

“How do we do that? Go around knocking on doors? Put an ad in the Hennepin Falls Gazette? Just walk around town shouting it at the tops of our lungs?”

She had said “we.” She was including him in her plans. Like a friend. His heart soared.

“We could print up flyers, put them up all over town. ‘On October 2nd, Jack McDougal, in the presence of multiple witnesses, threatened explicitly to gang rape Sally Brown with a group of his friends. She is currently in danger any time she steps out of her house. Something must be done to protect her. Please, call the police, call Jack McDougal’s parents, call Coolidge Middle School. Make everyone in a position of authority in this town aware of this threat.’”

The idea had possibilities. “Yeah. I think we should do all of the above, actually. I’ll talk to the principal today – we can go right now, actually. I can tell my parents… things are a bit strained between us since they found out I was bi-…” there it was, the perfect moment to slip that little tidbit in. David’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and a goofy grin formed on his face. Mission accomplished. “…but if there’s a threat to my life and limb I’m sure they’ll snap out of it.”

David, already cleaning up the remains of his lunch, ready for action, said “once the principal is aware of the situation, we can probably get permission to use the copier to run off copies of the flyer.”

“Good point,” said Sally who, rather than clean up after herself, simply donned her backpack and left her detritus on the table. “Let’s go.”

_She’s bi-_ , thought David, as he followed Sally to the office. _And she likes me. Does she like me that way? She sure smiles at me a lot. Oh, hell, it’s probably just wishful thinking. But don’t give up. Just wait and see how it goes._

He admonished himself for even thinking about such things under the current circumstances. She was in danger and he had to help her, protect her if he could.

He would protect her. He would be her hero.

He would win her love.


End file.
